lo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the mandrake groans when pulled from the ground; the pelican in her piety 

 feeds her brood by blood plucked from her breast; the barnacle la half herb, 

 half animal; the hyena converses with shepherds; the crocodile weeps over his 

 victims; the barometz is a lamb that is also partly a vegetable; the fleeing 

 lion erases his tracks with the end of his tail ; the father of the ant-lion " hath 

 a shape like a lion, his mother that of an ant; the father liveth on flesh and 

 the mother on herbs; his fore-part is like that of a lion and his hind-part like 

 that of an ant; being thus composed he is neither able to eat flesh like his 

 father, or herbs like his mother, and so he perisheth." 



These are a few extracts from the story books that delighted Europe 

 for centuries. 



The earth was generally believed to be flat, though the Greeks of 

 Alexandria knew better. The 'waters above the firmament' were nav- 

 igable; and there was a story of an anchor dropped to earth from a 

 ship sailing in this second ocean. There were races of men with one 

 eye, others with one leg, others whose enormous feet served as umbrellas 

 to keep away the rays of the torrid sun. Shakespeare's 'men whose 

 heads do lie between their shoulders' date from these legends. Fauns, 

 fairies, lamige, sylphs, vampires and the like were dreaded. Everything 

 was received with acquiescent wonder, and without criticism, whether 

 it were a miracle done by the relic of a saint, or the extravagant tale 

 of a traveler. The age of faith deserves its name in so far as it was 

 characteristically an age devoid of criticism. 



An Arabic compilation of the tenth century, Adja ih al-Hind — the 

 marvels of India — is composed of a hundred and twenty-four para- 

 graphs, each relating to some wonder recounted to the author by per- 

 sons whom he names. The work is entirely serious and the narrators 

 were famous seamen, merchants and travelers who were familiar with 

 the Indian Ocean, the Malay archipelago, the China seas and Ceylon. 

 These stories taken as a whole exhibit the extensive commerce carried 

 on, even at that day, between the nearer and the farther east, and speak 

 eloquently for the skill and courage of those early navigators who 

 traversed almost unknown seas with nothing but the stars to guide 

 them. Many of the marvels of the Arabian Nights are to be found 

 here — the roc, the valley of diamonds guarded by serpents, the shipmen 

 who mistake the back of a sleeping turtle of gigantic size for an island, 

 and the like. The legend of the Island of Women, under the star 

 Canopus, where the sea slopes downward, and where only women dwell, 

 is gravely given without even the phrase 'But Allah alone knows if 

 this be true,' by which a good Muslim shows his doubts. Of the exist- 

 ence of the gigantic bird, the roc, the author says 'This is a fact well 

 known to shipmen, and I have never known any one to doubt it. ' The 

 crocodiles of the Harbor of Serira do not bite men, he says, because 

 they were enchanted by a magician who had the power to make them 

 harmless and harmful at will. The prudent king of the country caused 



