56 The Origin and Antiquity of Man. | Jan., 
arguments he then used, with others which serve further to 
elucidate his meaning. Dr. Falconer’s strong point is the existence 
of traditions of a gigantic tortoise, comparable in size with the 
elephant, connected with the cosmogonic speculations of nearly all 
eastern nations, and he asks, “ Was this tortoise a mere creature of 
the imagination, or was the idea of it drawn from a reality like the 
Colossochelys ?” If the latter part of the question be answered in 
the affirmative, then the inference seems plausible that the Colos- 
sochelys may have co-existed with man. 
Mr. E. B. Tylor considers* the whole story of the World-tor- 
toise to be a “ Myth of Observation ;” he also shows that it exists in 
the New World, and states} that this occurrence of the tradition m 
the two hemispheres “leaves not the least opening for the suppo- 
sition of its having been carried by modern Europeans from the Old 
to the New World.” In his opinion alsot the various stories of the 
World-tortoise may be resolved into the conception of the world as 
“a flat plain over which the sky is placed as a dome, as the arched 
upper shell of the tortoise stands upon the flat plate below.” 
On the other hand, Dr. Falconer brings forward a considerable 
amount of cumulative evidence in support of his hypothesis. He 
shows that in the Pythagorean cosmogony and in the Hindoo my- 
thology reference is frequently made to different animals of extra- 
vagant magnitude, but whose conception may all (except the 
Tortoise) be traced to an exaggerated idea of the largest animals 
now existing in India ; and he sums up as follows :§—“ We have the 
elephant, then as at present, the largest of land animals, a fit sup- 
porter of the infant world; in the serpent Asokee, used at the 
churning of the ocean, we may trace a representative of the gigantie 
Indian Python ; and in the bird-god Garida, with all his attributes, 
we may detect the gigantic Crane of India (Ciconia gigantea), as 
supplyimg the origin. In like manner the Colossochelys would 
supply a consistent representative of the Tortoise that sustained the 
Elephant and the world together. But if we are to suppose that the 
mythological notion of the Tortoise was derived, as a symbol of 
strength, from some one of those small species which are now 
known to exist in India, this congruity of ideas, this harmony of 
representation would be at once violated. It would be as legitimate 
to talk of a rat or a mouse contending with an elephant as of any 
known Indian tortoise to do the same in the case of the fable of 
Garuda.” 
This evidence is drawn from the most questionable of sources ; 
and although we quite agree with Dr. Falconer in the opinion that 
“Geology has never disdained to draw upon any department of 
human knowledge that could throw light on the subjects which it 
* « Warly History of Mankind,’ p. 300. t P. 336. 
q P. 333, § P. 380. 
