THE MAMMOTH 185 



good old days when knowledge of anatomy 

 was small and credulity was great. The least 

 absurd theory concerning them was that they 

 were the bones of the elephants which Hanni- 

 bal brought from Africa. Occasionally they 

 were brought forward as irrefutable evidences 

 of the deluge ; but usually they figured as the 

 bones of giants, the most famous of them being 

 known as Teutobochus, King of the Cimbri, a 

 lusty warrior said to have had a height of nine- 

 teen feet. Somewhat smaller, but still of re- 

 spectable height, fourteen feet, was "Littell 

 Johne" of Scotland, whereof Hector Boece 

 wrote, concluding, in a moralizing tone, " Be 

 quilk (which) it appears how extravegant and 

 squaire pepill grew in oure regioun afore they 

 were effeminat with lust and intemperance of 

 mouth." More than this, these bones have 

 been venerated in Greece and Rome as the re- 

 mains of pagan heroes, and later on worshipped 

 as relics of Christian saints. Did not the 

 church of Valencia possess an elephant tooth 

 which did duty as that of St. Christopher, 

 and, so late as 1789, was not a thigh-bone, fig- 

 uring as the arm-bone of a saint, carried in 



