THE MAMMOTH. 195 



abundance. According to Pallas, the great Russian savant, there ,- 

 is not in the whole of Asiatic Russia, from the Don to the 1 

 extremity of the Tchutchian promontory, any brook or river on \ 

 the banks of which some bones of elephants and other animals \ 

 foreign to these regions have not been found. The primaeval 1 

 elephants (Mammoth, Mastodon, etc.) appear to have formerly 

 ranged over the whole northern hemisphere of the globe, from the 

 fortieth parallel to the sixtieth, and possibly to near the seventieth 

 degree of latitude. 



Just as the North American Indian regards the great bones of 

 Professor Marsh's extinct Eocene mammals that peep out from 

 the sides of buttes and canons, as belonging to his ancestors, 

 so we find that in all parts of the world the bones of extinct 

 elephants have, on account of their great size (and partly from 

 a certain resemblance, in some, to bones of the human skeleton), 

 been regarded as testifying to the former existence of giants, 

 heroes, and demigods. To the present day the Hindoos consider 

 such remains as belonging to the Rakshas, or Titans, beings that 

 figure largely in their ancient writings. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, 

 a pupil of Aristotle, appears to have been the first to record the 

 discovery of fossil ivory and bones. These were probably obtained 

 by the country people from certain deposits in the neighbourhood, 

 and are mentioned five hundred years later by Pausanias. Several 

 Greek legends and traditions appear to be founded on such 

 discoveries. 



Thus the Greeks mistook the knee-bone of an elephant for 

 that of Ajax. In like manner the supposed body of Orestes, 

 thirteen feet in length, discovered by the Spartans at Tegea, 

 doubtless was the skeleton of some elephant. In the isle of 

 Rhodes, in Sicily, and near Palmero, Syracuse, and at many 

 other places, similar remains have afforded a basis for stories of 

 giants. In fact, so much has been said by old writers on this 

 subject, that whole volumes might be filled with such matter. Let 

 one or two examples suffice. 



