88 -THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



have given rise to the fable of the pigmies. In 

 some corner of these monuments, Agatharcides 

 must have discovered his carnivorous bull, whose 

 mouth, extending from ear to ear, devoured every 

 other animal that came in his way.* But no na- 

 turalist scarcely will acknowledge the existence 

 of any such animal, since nature has never joined 

 cloven hoofs and horns with teeth adapted for cut- 

 ting and devouring animal food. 



There may have been many other figures equally 

 strange with these, either among those monuments 

 of Egypt which have not been able to resist the ra- 

 vages of time, or in the ancient temples of Ethio- 

 pia and Arabia, which have been destroyed by the 

 religious zeal of the Abyssinians and Mahometans. 

 The monuments of India teem with such figures; 

 but the combinations in these are so ridiculously 

 extravagant, that they have never imposed even 

 upon the most credulous. Monsters with an hun- 

 dred arms, and twenty heads of different kinds, 

 are far too absurd to be believed. 



Nay, the inhabitants of China and Japan have 

 their imaginary animals, which they represent as 

 *eal, and that too in their religious books. The 

 Mexicans had them. In short, they are to be found 

 among every people whose idolatry has not yet ac- 



* Phot Bibl. art. 250. -Agarthacid. Excerp. Hist, cap 39. 

 Amm. XVII. 45 PKn. VIII, gl. 



