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 
