THE PROBOSCIS, OR ELEPHANTS. 229 



We do not put much faith in the Indian legend, 

 according to which the monsters which the 

 Great Spirit destroyed by lightnings, and which 

 died without leaving offspring, were Mastodons 

 (which existed in America as the earliest contem- 



Fia. 39. Macrauchenia patagonia. After Burmeister. 



poraries of man), still, A. W. Schlegel as early as 

 1883 ! pointed out in one of his classic inquiries 

 that the influence exercised by the elephants upon 

 the imagination of the Hindoos was positively all- 



' A. W. Schlegel, Indische Bibliothek, 1823. 



