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♦ KNOWLKDGE ♦ 



[August 2, 1886. 



incredulity, for ignorant credulity deserves quite as much to 

 be censured. But then it must b3 admitted that, whereas 

 ignorant credulity has ah-eady been widely and deeply cen- 

 sured, ignorant incredulity has hitherto in gi-eat degree 

 (certainly in undue degree) escaped. Still, throughout the 

 book before us the want of balance can be noticed. It even 

 affects Mr. Gould's own judgment, insomuch that he greatly 

 impairs the weight of the general evidence he brings to bear 

 on each class of wonders he deals with, by accepting almost 

 unnuestioningly a quantity of evidence as to detail which is, 

 to say the least, open to grave suspicion. 



A very interesting section of the introductory matter is 

 tliat relating to cuttlefish — which our author very properly 

 takes as an example of a creatui-e which has at last been 

 shown to be, and to do, what the foolishly incredulous had 

 laughed at as out of all reason. The accompanying picture 

 from ]\Ir. Gould's book presents a view painted eaily in the 

 present century by the celebrated Japanese artist, Hokusai, 

 of a fisherman attacked by a monstrous cuttlefish, even as 

 the hero of " Les Travailleurs de la I\Ier " was attacked, — 

 only the fisherman seems to be able to oppose no effective 

 i-esistauce. The late Frank Buckland gives an interesting 

 account of a Japanese carving in ivory, said to be one 

 liundred and fifty years old, representing a timilar event. 



stronger than man, those who had such evidence preferred 

 not to give it. Only the lucky accident that one or two 

 large cuttlefish were fortunately stranded where there 

 happened to be an intelligent observer or two, while two 

 very large cuttlefish were killed, caused the stories which 

 bad been so often and so persistently ridiculed to be recog- 

 nised as simply accounts of facts. The girafle, the hippo- 

 potamus, the gorilla, and a number of other animals whose 

 existence had been unsuspected or forgotten, gave similar 

 exercise to the cachinnatory powers of the scribblers who 

 represent the foolishly incredulous. 



The evidence deduced by Mr. Gould from the extinction 

 of species associated with the evidence based on the 

 continued existence of species — the catfish, for example, 

 still found in the Missouri is a survival of the Silurian 

 era — deserves to be most carefully studied. The recogni- 

 tion of the antiquity of man is also most important in this 

 connection, showing that though, if man had lasted but a few 

 thousand years, we could hardly understand myths of such 

 creatures as the great saurians and bats of long ])ast ages, 

 such memories become very easily intelligible when we find 

 that man has existed many tens of thousands — perhaps 

 many hundreds of thousands — of years upon the earth. 



With ]SIr. Gould's discussion of deluge myths we are not 



Fig. 1. — FlSHERM.\N ATTACKED BY OCTOPUS. 



It shows "a lady in a quasi-leaning attitude; and at first 

 sight it is difficult to conceive what she is doing, but after 

 a while the details come out magnificently. The unfortunate 

 lady has been seized by an octopus while bathing, for the 

 lady wears a bathing-dress. One extended arm of the 

 octopus is in the act of coiling round the lady's neck, 

 and she is endeavouring to pull it o3' with her right hand ; 

 another arm of the monster is entwined round the left 

 wrist, while the band is fiercely tearing at the mouth of the 

 brute. The other arms of the octopus are twined round, 

 grasping the lady's body and waist — in fact, her jjosition 

 reminds one very much of Laocoon in the celebrated statue 

 of the snakes seizing him and his two sons. The sucking 

 discs of the octopus are cai-ved exactly as they are in 

 nature, and the colour of the body of the monster, together 

 with the formidable aspect of the eyes, are wonderfully 

 represented. The face of this Japanese lady is most 

 admirably done: it expresses the utmost terror and alarm, 

 and possibly may be a portrait." 



The cuttlefish is an excellent example of the slow 

 progress of discovery when obstructed by incredulity of 

 the crassly stupid sort. Because ignorant newspaper 

 writers loaded with abuse every fresh piece of evidence 

 showing the enormous size these creatures attain, and 

 that some could destroy an animal much larger ami 



satisfied. It appears to us that all the circumstances in 

 which such myths agree and those in which they disagree 

 are alike explained by a much simpler theory. All races 

 who built large structures, or excavated the earth to any 

 considerable depth, must have recognised the signs of the 

 past presence of the ocean where, in their own time, there 

 was dry land. The Assyrians and Babylonians, the 

 Egyptians, the Persians, and the Indians — all the civilised 

 races of antiquity had eyes to see, and minds wherewith to 

 consider, the evidence which geologists have found convinc- 

 ing in regard to tlie interchange of land and watei'. (_)n the 

 sandy plains around the pyramids are found the remains of 

 a tertiary ocean, sea-shells as perfect as those which are 

 rolled upon the shores of our existing seas. In the excava- 

 tions made by the Assyrians and Babylonians similar evi- 

 dence came to light. The Iudian.s, Persians, Chinese, 

 Mexicans, — all such nations had evidence of the kind. How 

 could they fail to infer that the seas bad once stood where 

 they saw the remains of creatuies which only exist in the 

 sea? And uniting this evidence with that derived from 

 partial floods, such as occur in neai-ly all countries, or in 

 Egypt with the .study of the varying overflow of the Nile, 

 what opinion could they form but that, in some remote past 

 age, there had been a great flood destroying all their- country 1 

 In them that idea would be the idea of a universal flood, 



