THE MONSTROUS IN ART. 737 



nature to suggest them, it may be ■well to examine, in the light of the 

 present day, for their justification, but not for ours (who have copied 

 them and ought to have known better), what they really had as foun- 

 dation for these monstrous forms in truth, real or apparent. 



The conception of the Centaurs, we have already seen, is easily ex- 

 plained by the appearance of a man on horseback. Workers in metals, 

 exposed to the intense heat and glare of their fires, would naturally 

 protect their faces by masks of wood or leather, as makers of plate- 

 glass, for example, do now, looking out through a single median hole — 

 hence the fabulous Cyclops. The Satyrs were evidently derived from 

 some of the large anthropoid apes, which must have been known to 

 primeval man. 



The above-mentioned monsters, and many others which admit of a 

 natural explanation, did not originate with the Greeks ; they obtained 

 them from the Egyptians, and these from antecedent races long before 

 the historic period. The existence of man with the mammoth, masto- 

 don, Irish elk, cave bear and lion, among quadrupeds — with the dodo, 

 dinornis, and epiornis, among birds — suggests that perhaps he may 

 have lived with the pterodactyl and serpent-like marine lizards, or 

 their modified descendants, in the Tertiary or a more remote epoch. 

 The mastodon, or the mammoth (either), might easily have been 

 made into the Minotaur killed by Theseus ; the Nemean lion slain by 

 Hercules may well have been the Felis spelma of the bone-caves ; the 

 rhinoceros would make an excellent foundation for the unicorn; the 

 cuttle-fishes of the Mediterranean, with their eight or ten arms, moving 

 independently, and armed with terrible suckers, would readily suggest 

 the many-headed hydra, also killed by Hercules. 



The Sirens, and other marine creatures of human likeness, are the 

 natural outgrowths of the imagination of sailors returning from long 

 voyages, without the sight of a woman for months or years. Seeing 

 manatees and seals reclining on the shores, holding their young in their 

 arms while suckling them, like all mammals, the semi-human faces, the 

 womanly position, and the tender care and anxiety for their young in 

 this act — their hearts would be filled with such joy at thoughts of home, 

 and their eyes with tears long pent up, that the combination of indis- 

 tinct vision and excited imagination would transform the creatures they 

 saw into the beautiful women they longed to see. 



At Stabile have been found mural tablets representing Nereids, or 

 horses with the tail of a fish, evidently suggested by the little sea-horse 

 {hippocampus) of the Mediterranean ; in some the head of the horse is 

 replaced by the head of a tiger — not a very abrupt transition. 



The fauna of the Tertiary age from the Miocene down, which there 

 is some reason to believe passed before the eyes of primeval man, would 

 afford ample material for gorgons, dragons, sylphs, and satyrs, leviathan 

 and behemoth, and the whole list of ancient and modern fabulous mon- 

 sters. The birds with teeth, and the winged lizard of the Secondary 



