IX.] 



RHINOCEROS HORNS. 



307 



the same time to exert a like beneficial influence on the arrow, 

 tending to make it hit the mark, as, according to the hunter's 

 superstition among ourselves in former days, some cat's claws 

 and owl's eyes placed in the bullet mould had on the ball. The 

 natives believed that the crania and horns of the rhinoceros 

 found along with the remains of the mammoth belonged to 

 gigantic birds, regarding which there were told in the tents of 

 the Yakut, the Ostyak and the Tunguse many tales resembling 

 that of the bird Roc in the Thousand and One Nights. Ermann 



SIBERIAN RHINOCEROS HORN. 



Presprved in the Museum at St. PetersbuTf,'. 



and Middendorff even suppose that such finds two thousand 

 years ago gave occasion to Herodotus' account of the Arimaspi 

 and the gold-guarding dragons {Herodotus, Book IV. chap. 27). 

 Certain Tt is that during the middle ages such "grip-claws" 

 were preserved, as of great value, in the treasuries and art col- 

 lections of that time, and that they gave rise to many a romantic 

 story in the folk-lore both of the West and East. Even in 

 this century Hedenstroni, the otherwise sagacious traveller on 

 the Siberian Polar Sea, believed that the fossil rhinoceros' horns 



X 2 



