Ornithological and Other Oddities 



mammoths were taken for those of human 

 giants. 



The monstrous ants are, it is to be feared, 

 entirely indefensible. Physical limitations would 

 probably make any insects "somewhat larger 

 than foxes, but less than dogs," quite impossible. 

 The biggest known creatures formed on the 

 plate-armour plan of the arthropoids are, and 

 always have been, aquatic. Were it not for the 

 mechanical disadvantages under which the muscles 

 of insects work, Herodotus's ants might well have 

 existed, and been all that his informants pictured 

 them, as any one will admit who has studied ants 

 in the tropics, where, as has been well remarked, 

 the sluggard need not go to the ant, as that in- 

 dustrious insect will save him the trouble. 



The Herodotean account of the hippopotamus 

 is, of course, extremely inaccurate ; no one needs 

 to be told that it has not the mane and tail of a 

 horse. But the Greeks must have seen in it 

 some resemblance to a horse, or they would not 

 have called it the river-horse ; and, indeed, the 

 comparison is not worse than that which made 

 the Teutons find a likeness to the horse in the 

 walrus. While on the subject of names, it is 

 interesting to note that Herodotus observes that 

 the crocodile was so named by the Greeks from 

 its resemblance to a lizard, just as a corruption 



of a Portuguese name later gave us the word 



258 



