58 Zoological Society. 



the mother of the serpent, it is mentioned that he was sent on an 

 expedition to bring ' Chundra' the moon, from whom the serpents 

 were to derive the water of immortalit3^ While pursuing his journey, 

 amidst strange adventures, Gariida met his father Kiishgiifa, who 

 directed him to ' ajjpease his hunger at a certain lake, where an ele- 

 phant and tortoise loere fighting . The body of the tortoise was eighty 

 miles long — the elephant's 160. Garuda with one claw seized the 

 elephant — with the other the tortoise, and perched with them on a 

 tree 800 miles high.' He is then, after sundry adventures, stated to 

 have fled to a mountain on an uninhabited countiy, and finished his 

 repast on the tortoise and elephant. 



" In these three instances, taken from Pythagoras and the Hindoo 

 mythology, we have reference to a gigantic form of tortoise, com- 

 parable in size with the elephant. Hence the question arises, are 

 we to consider the idea as a mere fiction of the imagination, like the 

 Minotaur and the chimjera, the griffin, the dragon, and the cartazo- 

 non, &c., or as founded on some justifying reality ? The Greek and 

 Persian monsters are composed of fanciful and wild combinations of 

 different portions of known animals into impossible forms, and, as 

 Cuvier fitly remarks, they are merely the progeny of uncurbed imagi- 

 nation ; but in the Indian cosmogonic forms we may trace an image of 

 congruity through the cloud of exaggeration with which they are 

 invested. We have the elephant, then as at present, the largest of 

 land animals, a fit supporter of the infant world ; in the serpent 

 Asokee, used at the churning of the ocean, we may trace a represen- 

 tative of the gigantic Indian python ; and in the bird-god Garuda, 

 with all his attributes, we may detect the gigantic crane of India 

 {Ciconia gigantea) as supplying the origin. In like manner, the 

 Colossocheiys would supply a consistent representative of the tortoise 

 that sustained the elephant and the world together. But if we are 

 to suppose that the mj'thological 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 har- 

 mony of representation would be at once violated ; it would be as legi- 

 timate 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. The fancy would scout the image as incongruous, and the 

 weight even of mythology would not be strong enough to enforce it 

 on the faith of the most superstitious epoch of the human race. 



" But the indications of mythological tradition are in eveiy case 

 vague and uncertain, and in the present instance we would not lay 

 undue weight on the tendencies of such as concern the tortoise. We 

 have entered so much at length on them on this occasion, from the 

 important bearing which the point has on a very remarkable matter 

 of early belief entertained by a large portion of the human race. The 

 result at which we have arrived is, that there are fair grounds for 

 entertaining the belief as probable that the Colossocheiys Atlas may 

 have lived down to an early period of the human epoch and become 

 extinct since : — 1st, from the fact that other Chelonian species and 



