58 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



supposed to be not more than four years old, and its 

 love of play. He easily refutes the belief that the 

 elephant had but one joint in its limbs. Finding two 

 live elephants at Constantinople, he measured the larger 

 one. With this insignificant contribution recommences 

 the study of the structure and natural history of the 

 elephant, interrupted for some nineteen centuries. The 

 same little book contains notes on the "marine elephant" 

 (hippopotamus), which also he saw alive at Constanti- 

 nople, the giraffe, and an ichneumon, which last he kept 

 alive for some time. 



Siegmund von Herberstein, who visited Moscow in 

 1516-7 and again in 1526, as ambassador from the 

 emperors Maximilian and Charles V., described Russia 

 for the gratification of the curious.-^ Among other things 

 he mentions some remarkable wild animals, the bison, 

 the elk, the ibex or some allied species, and the onager 

 or wild ass. He says of the Lithuanian bison that it 

 has a mane, long hair about the neck and shoulders and 

 a beard ; the eye is large and fierce, as if on fire ; the 

 horns are wide apart, and there is a hump on the back 

 (not a real hump, but only high withers) ; the animal 

 smells of musk. 



Whatever Olaus Magnus (Magni or Stor) titular 

 archbishop of Upsala (b. 1490, d. 1557) may have been 

 as a describer of national customs and a collector of 

 folklore, he sinks to the mediaeval level in his descriptions 

 of animals. His History of the Northern Nations^ 

 tells of the glutton, which after gorging himself makes 

 ready for another meal by squeezing his body between 

 two trees, of the kraken, which is able to swallow ships, 



I 



^ Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii, Fol. Vienna. 1549. Translated as 

 ■*'Notes upon Russia," 2 vols., Hakluyt Soc. 1851-2. 

 2 Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Fol. Rome. 1555. 



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