FOSS/LS AND GIANTS. 37 



molars of some extinct elephant or mammoth; that 

 what were regarded as the vertebrae and femurs of 

 Titans and giants belonged in reality to certain 

 monstrous pachyderms long since extinct, and that 

 what was exhibited as the hand of one of the huge 

 representatives of the human family proved, on ex- 

 amination, to be the bones of the fore-fin of a whale. 

 And, as science advanced, it was finally discovered 

 that there had never been any material difference in 

 the stature of men, that the races of antiquity were 

 no taller than those now existing, and that there is 

 no evidence whatever that there were ever, at any 

 period of the world's history, men of greater stature 

 than those occasionally seen in our own day. 1 



But notwithstanding the progress of discovery, 

 people were loath to give up their belief in giants, as 

 they were unwilling to change their opinions respect- 

 ing the plastic power of the earth and the universally 

 exterminating effects of the Flood. Men who be- 

 lieved in the existence of griffons and flying dragons, 

 and who regarded the horns of fossil rhinoceroses, so 

 numerous in parts of Europe and Asia, as the claws 

 of griffons and as certain proofs of the existence of 

 these fabled creatures, could not be blamed if they 

 gave more or less credence to the countless tradi- 

 tionary tales respecting Titans and giants. 



True Significance of Fossils. 



The true significance of fossils, however, was not 

 understood until the time of Cuvier, the illustrious 



1 See Howorth's " Mammoth and the Flood," chaps, i and n, 

 and Wood's " Giants and Dwarfs." 



