EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 339 



dionalis. The most striking characteristic of the American 

 elephant, especially of the imperator type, according to Dr. 

 Soergel, is its race purity as compared with the more vari- 

 able forms of the European species. He considers Elephas 

 columbi to be the direct descendant of Elephas imperator; 

 whether the primigenius form in America was an autoch- 

 thonous development from earlier forms, or was directly 

 derived, through migration from Asia, remains doubtful.* 



The early discoverers of mammoth bones in Europe 

 were confident that these were the remains of men of gi- 

 gantic stature. They were, perhaps, mindful of the Scrip- 

 tural saying that "there were giants in those days." 



The choice of the "Wild Man" or the "Giant of Reyden" 

 as bearer of the city coat-of-arms of Lucerne, Switzerland, 

 is said to have been due to the reconstruction — or rather 

 construction — of a putative giant figure out of mammoth 

 bones found near the monastery of Reyden, Canton Lu- 

 cerne, in 1577. Even the famous physician of Basel, Felix 

 Plater, gave his judgment in favour of the theory that they 

 were the bones of a giant when he was shown them in 1584, 

 and in pursuance of this view he induced the painter, H. 

 Bock, of Basel, to make a sketch of a gigantic human skele- 

 ton built up out of these mammoth remains and which 

 must have measured over 16 ft. in height. It has been 

 stated that this sketch still exists in the Jesuit monastery 



of Lucerne, t 



About the beginning of the seventeenth century a quan- 

 tity of bones of enormous size were dug up on the banks of 

 the river Isere, at a spot where Hannibal halted for a while 

 on his expedition from Spain to Italy. Many of the learned 

 of the time asserted that these bones must be those of the 



*W. Soergel, "Die Stammmesgeschichte der Elephanten," in Centralblatt fUr Mineral- 

 ogie. Geologic, und Palaontologie, 1915, No. 9, May 1, pp. 278-284. 

 fJohannes Felix, "Das Mammuth von Borna," Leipzig, 1912, p. 4. 



