354 KNOWLEDGE OF FORMER 



Through the whole of the romance period of European 

 literature, nothing figures but serpents, "white and 

 red," toiling and fighting underground, thus producing 

 earthquake as in the story of Merlin and the building 

 of Stonehenge. Flying monsters, griffins and others, 

 which now live only in the meaningless embellishments 

 of heraldry, appear to have been conceived by the earlier 

 races of men as the representatives of power. Curious 

 is it, too, to find the same class of idea& prevailing in 

 the East. The monster dragons of the Chinese, blazoned 

 on their standards and ornamenting their temples ; 

 the Buddaical superstition that the world is supported 

 on a vast elephant, which stands on the back of a tor- 

 toise, which again rests on a serpent, whose movements 

 produce earthquakes and violent convulsions ; the rude 

 decorations- also of the temples of the Aztecs, which 

 have been so recently restored to our knowledge by the 

 adventurous travellers of Central America, all give 

 expression to the same mythological idea. 



Do not these indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge 

 of a previous state of organic existence ? The process 

 of communion between man of the present, and the 

 creations of a former world, we know not; it is 

 mysterious, and for ever lost to us. But even the most 

 ignorant and uncultivated races of mankind have figured 

 for themselves the images of creatures which, whilst 

 they do really bear some resemblance to things which 

 have for ever passed away, do not, in the remotest 

 degree, partake of any of the peculiarities of existing 

 creations. 



The ichthyosaurus; and the plesiosaurus, and the 

 pterodactylus, are preserved in the rude images of 

 harpies, of dragons, and of griffins; and, although the 

 idea of an elephant standing on the back of a tortoise 

 was- often laughed at as an absurdity, Captain Cautley 

 and Dr. Falconer at length discovered in the hills of 

 Asia the remains of a tortoise in a fossil state of such a 



