ANCIENT AND MODERN VIEWS OF NATURE. 3 



every description. Nor is this surprising, when 

 we remember the size and ferocity of the wild 

 beasts of the Quaternary period, with which men 

 were certainly contemporaneous, and that many 

 large and fierce beasts, such as the lion and the 

 urns, have become extinct even in Europe, only 

 within a few centuries at furthest. Thus, the 

 rukhs of Arabian fable are merely exaggerated 

 accounts of the large birds that recently abounded 

 in many of the islands visited by Arabian 

 navigators.* 



The earth was formerly believed to be cir- 

 cular, and encompassed by the circumambient 

 ocean, beyond which, in many systems, a chain of 

 high mountains^ formed a vast ring, the termina- 

 tion of the Universe horizontally. The earth 

 itself was supposed to be hollow, or rather to 

 form the roof of a great cavern (Hades, Sheol, or 

 Hell),J inhabited by the souls of the dead. The 



* The Islands of Wak-wak, of which such wonderful stories are 

 narrated by these writers, are the Aru Islands near New Guinea, and 

 the human heads which grow there like fruit, and cry " Wak-wak" at 

 sunrise and sunset, are the Birds of Paradise, which settle in flocks on 

 the trees and utter this cry. 



*f Kdf of the Arabians, Jotunheim of the Norsemen. 



\ The two former words are generally translated " hell," in the 

 authorited version of the Bible, which is unfortunate, as the latter 

 word, though once synonymous, now conveys a very different idea. 



B2 



