THE LIMIT OF SIZE IN MODERN ANIMALS 183 



with this, the tortoises from the Galapagos Islands 

 in the Pacific, whose strange and solitary existence is 

 so curiously described by Darwin, are mere dwarfs, 

 the largest having only weighed 200 Ibs. ; but the 

 contrast in size between these surviving giants and 

 the dwarf scale of the many forms which seem 

 destined to survive and flourish, down to the tiny 

 * tortoisettes ' no bigger than a watch, would, even if 

 these creatures stood alone as examples of the dwind- 

 ling tendency of species, be enough to suggest that 

 the limit of animal dimensions had long ago passed 

 its acme and entered on its decline. The evidence 

 of the gigantic forms which fill the long galleries of 

 the Museum, seems to point to the same conclusion. 

 Those for whose monstrous bones existing life affords 

 no parallel except to the instructed mind of the 

 biologist, merely present themselves as objects of 

 wonder, without suggesting a comparison. But the 

 skull of the elephant found in the Sewalik hills of 

 India, with tusks 12 ft. long, like the limbs of a 

 tree, and the horns of the Irish deer, which stood 

 2 ft. higher at the shoulder than the largest wapiti 

 of the Rocky Mountains remains of creatures 

 identical in character with those which now frequent 

 the regions they once inhabited seem visible evi- 

 dence of a steady and universal decline of which in- 

 stances might be multiplied without number. 



