588 THE UNIVERSE. 



silenced the immortal writer. But these few words Buff on 

 never uttered. He could have told him that we find these 

 fossil vestiges everywhere, even in the two Americas, whither 

 certainly these pious travellers never carried them ; whilst, 

 on the other hand, there are even imposing chains of moun- 

 tains which are absolutely formed of shells. 



Notwithstanding the perfect preservation of many fos- 

 sils, the love of the marvellous which predominated over 

 our ancestors made them misunderstand nature, and these 

 relics were almost constantly assigned to some extraordi- 

 nary creature or other. The bones of bears, which were 

 obtained from the caves of Franconia, passed in Germany 

 for a sovereign antidote, and were sold in all the apothe- 

 caries' shops as the remains of the fabulous unicorn. 



For the elephants and mastodons there was generally an- 

 other story. As many of the bones of these animals pre- 

 sent in their forms striking resemblances to those of man, at 

 an epoch when the imagination of our forefathers, roused 

 to enthusiasm by the legends of olden times, elevated the 

 stature of heroes to the height of their heroic poems, the 

 bones of the -great mammals found in the earth were con- 

 stantly referred to some celebrated personage. 



Thus, according to the statement of Pausanias, the knee- 

 cap of an elephant, as large as a circus discus, found near 

 Salamis, was considered as having belonged to Ajax. The 

 Spartans prostrated themselves before the skeleton of one 

 of these animals, in which they thought they recognized 

 the skeleton of Orestes. Some remains of a mammoth 

 found in Sicily were considered as having belonged to Poly- 

 phemus ! . . . 



