August 2, 1886.] 



♦ KNO^A^LEE)GE ♦ 



ofvo 



destro3ing all life, except eitlier such life as might be saved 

 in ships, or such life as might by a miracle be restored to the 

 earth after the waters of the Hood liad passed awaj'. The 

 story of the Flood, in one or other of the forms combined — 

 oddly enough — in Hebrew records (borrowed, beyond a 

 doubt, from both Egj-pt and Babylonia), is so far from being 

 a surpiising matter, that, considering the multitudinous 

 evidence of the past presence of the seas over i-egious now 

 high above the sea level, it might fairly have been anticipated 

 that some such story would start into existence in every 

 community wliich passed beyond the savage state. Even 

 some contrivance for boxing the animals in a sufficiently 

 large vessel would seem absolutely neces.=ary to those who 

 saw that waters had once stood even above mountain 

 heights. For, in the 6rst place, they had no means of know- 

 ing how changes of level had brought this about without 

 destroying all forms of animal life; while, in the .second place, 

 they knew not what an immense number of forms of life 

 from the various classes of elephants, rhinoceroses, hip- 

 potamuses, girafles, etc., down to creatures too minute to 



set in some gloomy cave within a forest, as a punishment 

 for the misdeeds of men, or perhaps of their inability to 

 believe in the right sort of deity. The idea that one dragon 

 necessarily implied the existence of hundreds and the past 

 existence of hundreds of thousands, would have seemed 

 absurd to men who could believe in whole nations of men 

 as sprung from single pairs, like Abraham and Sarah, Lot, 

 Esau, Ishmael, and their respective .spouses. 



But to us who not only believe but ki>ow that life has 

 existed on the earth, in the sea, and in the air during many 

 millions of years, it is much more difficult to reject the old 

 stories of dragons than to accept them. Of course there 

 were exaggerations, as there have been in the case of the 

 elephant, the giraffe, the crocodile, the boa constrictor, the 

 condor, and so forth. But the general truth of dragon 

 stories, rejected only because of an ingrained belief in 

 erroneous ideas as to the origin of life on the earth, must 

 now be admitted as at least more jirobable by far than the 

 theory that such narratives are wholly false. 



Moreover, we find ancient Egyptian, Indian, fireek, and 



Fig. 1'.— SiEA-SERPENT SEEN BY HAXS (AFTERWAnDS BiSHOP) EUEDE IN 1731 OFF THE SOUTH CoAST OF GREESLAXD. 



have been noticed by them, must have been boxed within 

 that un.savoury compass if their idea had been sound. 



But the chief interest of Mr. Gould's book undoubtedly 

 resides in his discussion of the curious evidence relating to 

 dragons and sea-serpents. 



As to dragons, it appears to us that the only reason there 

 ever has been for doubting the existence of large winged 

 creatures, or dragons, in former ages, such as now unques- 

 tionablv no longer exist, is that based on the supposition 

 that all animals made in the beginning, some six thousand 

 j'ears ago, exist at present. This supposition, absurd as it 

 seems now, was once nearly universal. And it was natural 

 enough. How could men attain to the knowledge that there 

 had been life on the earth, in the sea, and in the air millions 

 of years ago, until a long and careful study of the evidence 

 liad forced the truth upon them ] Viewing matters as all 

 men did in the Middle Ages, and as most men (despite our 

 boasted progress) view matters still, the belief in dragons 

 could only arise as a superstition after the creatures them- 

 selves, whatever they may have been, had disappeared. By 

 special creative act a monstrous dragoft might be made, and 



Roman stories about winged serpents destructive to life, 

 supported by Hebrew narratives. The Jews seem to have 

 encountered on their way from Egypt the destructive ser- 

 pents which are described in many ancient writings as 

 coming out of Arabia. And the fiery serpents of Numbers 

 are probably the same as the creatures referred to by I.saiah 

 as fiery flying serpents. Josejahus, indeed, probably describ- 

 ing the same event which in Numbers assumes a miraculous, 

 and therefore necessarily untrue, aspect, distinctly describes 

 the serpents which troubled the Jews as flying ones. 

 " When the ground was diflicult to be passed over," he 

 says, " because of the multitude of serpents (which it pro- 

 duces in vast numbers .... and such as are worse than 

 others in power and mischief, and an unusual fierceness of 

 sight [aspect], some of which ascend out of the gi-ound 

 unseen, and also fly in the air, and so come upon men at 

 unawares, and do them a mischief), Moses invented a 

 wonderful stratagem to preserve the army safe and without 

 hurt ; for he made baskets like unto arks of sedge, and filled 

 them with ibes, and carried them along with them, which 

 nnifpal is the greatest enemy to serpents imaginable, for 



