EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 341 



for it as being the remains of a fabulous creature denomi- 

 nated thien-shu, or "the mouse that hides." This "mouse," 

 however, is said to have been as large as an elephant, with 

 bones as white as ivory, and cold, but pure and wholesome 

 flesh; an allusion, it is believed, to the frozen remains of 

 mammoths. The "claw of a griffin," said to have been 

 given by the Khalif Haroun al Rashid to Charlemagne, was 

 probably a horn of the woolly Siberian rhinoceros. This 

 was, however, an isolated instance, although possibly some 

 of the unicorn's horns listed in old inventories may have 

 been of a similar kind, but the first certain notice we have 

 of the importation of Siberian fossil ivory into Western 

 Europe refers to some brought to London in 1611, by Josias 

 Logan, who bought it from the Samoyedes of the Pechora 

 district.* 



Certain data regarding the reported discovery of giants' 

 bones were published in the "Memoires" of the French 

 Academy of Sciences in 1727 by Sir Hans Sloane, whose collec- 

 tionf ormed the foundation of the British Museum, f An early 

 instance is given by Pliny, | who tells of an immense skeleton, 

 46 cubits high, which was found in a cavern of a Cretan 

 mountain that had been rent asunder by an earthquake. An 

 even more marvellous tale, told in late medieval times, 

 recounted the finding in Rome of the skeleton of Pallas, 

 which was higher than the city walls. A still stranger in- 

 stance is given by Simon Majolus** who quotes from Ful- 

 gosus, an earlier writer, that the bones of one of the olden 

 giants were in England, in 1171, still lying in their proper 

 order in the alluvium of a river; this skeleton measured 



*R. Lydekker, "Mammoth Ivory," see Smithsonian Annual Report for 1899, pp. 361- 

 366, and Sc. Amer. Suppl., 1228, July 11, 1899. 



t"Memoire sur les dents et autres ossements de I'elephant trouves dans la terre"; in 

 Memoires de 1' Academic Royale des Sciences, 1727; Paris, 1729, pp. 305 sqq. 



t"Natiuralis Historia," Lib. VII, cap. 16. 



**Dierura concularium, colloq. 2, p. 36. 



