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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Feb. 1, 1867. 



observed that the Calanti and Pcedsei of ancient 

 India and the Battas of the interior of Sumatra did 

 the same. Thirdly, they fought battles with cranes. 

 This may have been merely a playful way of 

 satirising their diminutive stature ; but Winwood 

 Reade tells us, on the authority of some old Jesuit 

 missionaries, that enormous birds once dwelt in 

 Abyssinia, and your correspondent " B. " of Melle, 

 has observed that the Maori traditions record an 

 analogous fact, viz., that their ancestors had to 

 contend with (may this phrase not bear the meaning 

 of "to hunt?") the moas and other gigantic birds 

 which formerly inhabited the islands of New 

 Zealand. Fourthly, they buried the dead under 

 heaps of stones, and accompanied these burials with 

 loud shouts of laughter. We nowhere read that 

 the Bushmen retain these peculiarities ; but how 

 strongly these stone-heaps resemble the cairns, and 

 these festivities, the*wakes or funeral revels of our 

 Celtic ancestors ! 



The traveller Bruce was very generally dis- 

 believed when he described the "feasts of living 

 animals " in which the Abyssinians indulge ; but the 

 literal truth of the statement has since been amply 

 vindicated. Nor is the custom, barbarous as it 

 may appear, entirely unprecedented, for a sect ex- 

 isted till very recently'in Bengal who were " sheep- 

 eaters," and devoured those animals piecemeal 

 while alive ; a representation of one of these people 

 in the act of devouring a sheep, faces the title-page 

 of the third volume of the " Proceedings of the 

 Asiatic Society." 



Most of the curious and mythical animals of 

 antiquity really exist or have some foundation in 

 natural history. Thus the idea of the Mermaid is 

 evidently derived from the strong resemblance 

 which the upper part of the bodies of some of the 

 seal tribe bear to the human, and especially the 

 female, figure ; this resemblance is stated to be most 

 fully developed in the Cow-fish of Brazilian rivers. 



Again, it is extremely doubtful whether the 

 Unicorn, which figures so; conspicuously in our 

 royal arms, is an extinct animal, a rare animal, an 

 ideal derived from the appearance of some ante- 

 lope seen in profile, or from the rhinoceros. The 

 inhabitants of Thibet assert that a creature of this 

 character is known in the unexplored tracts of 

 Mongolia, and the skull of an unknown animal of 

 this type may be seen at^the Museum of the African 

 Missionary Society. 



That the Sea-Serpent and Norwegian Kraken, or 

 Gigantic Polyp, really exist, I am firmly convinced ; 

 and I think that any one who takes the trouble to 

 read two very ingenious and interesting articles 

 upon the subject, which appeared in Beeton's Boys' 

 Monthly Magazine in the course of 1S61, will become 

 a convert to my opinion. 



Even the Centaurs of ancient Greece were no 

 myths ; they were, beyond doubt, the first horse- 



riders. The Aztecs, it may be remembered, who 

 had never seen a horse before the invasion of 

 Mexico by Cortes were with difficulty persuaded 

 that the horse and man were not one animal. 



It seems also very probable that the Fairies, so 

 frequently mentioned in our literature and folk-lore, 

 were in reality the Druids and their votaries, who, 

 driven into concealment by the persecutions of the 

 Roman governors and the spread of Christianity, 

 long performed their mystic rites under cover of 

 night, in the depths of their sacred groves. The 

 peasantry, seeing them thus engaged, would natu- 

 rally regard them as supernaturals — a belief which 

 the dread of Druidic enchantments mightjncrease. 

 A mingled affection for the old faith and dread of 

 the powers of the Druids would procure for them 

 the name of the " good-folk," so universally applied 

 to the fays, and explain the origin of the curious 

 legends which the native Irish so implicitly believe. 



Thus, whilst the flippant and superficial condemn 

 all ancient authors as mere story-tellers, and all 

 ancient, traditions as apocryphal, the painstaking 

 may extract from them most interesting and valu- 

 able information, thereby exemplifying the old pro- 

 verb, "that what is one man's meat is another 

 man's poison." The works of Captain Cook and 

 Dr. Livingstone afford examples of the scrupulous 

 truthfulness which distinguishes the highest class of 

 travellers. Captain Cook's charts and observations 

 are so accurate that mariners still use them on the 

 coasts of Tasmania and New Zealand ; while it has 

 been remarked that Dr. Livingstone, the discoverer 

 of the vast Yictoria Falls on the Zambesi River, 

 committed the rare error of under-estimating their 

 extent. If all travellers were as cautious in their 

 statements, there would be little point in the prac- 

 tice of stigmatizing improbable stories as "Tra- 

 vellers' Tales." F. A. Allen. 



Voracity of the Stabling. — During the snow- 

 storm of last week, Sergeant-Major Collins, of the 

 Dorset Militia, observed a common starling {Stumus 

 vulgaris) [perched uponl the top rail of a fence in 

 the neighbourhood of the barracks. Suddenly it 

 pounced upon something in the snow, and evidently 

 swallowed it. The serjeant-major resolved to see 

 what this was, and immediately shot the starling, 

 when, on wringing off the head after the most 

 approved style of doing execution on these peculiar 

 birds, what was his surprise to find projecting from 

 the thorax of the bird thus decapitated, the sharp 

 head and eyes with the two fore-claws of a nimble 

 lizard (Lacerta agilis), three or four inches in lengt li, 

 which the starling had swallowed entire. The 

 serjeant-major exhibited the lizard alive in Dor- 

 chester market on Saturday ; for, strange to say, 

 after remaining dormant for 21 hours, it revived. — 

 Weymouth and Dorchester Telegram, Jan. 10. 



