COLOSSOCHELYS ATLAS. 367 



opinion that it may have descended to the hiiman period ? ' 

 Any a priori improbability, that an animal so hugely dis- 

 proportionate to existing species should have lived down to 

 be a contemporary with man, is destroyed by the fact that 

 other species of Chelonians, which were coeval with the 

 Colossochelys in the same fauna, have reached to the present 

 time ; and what is true in this respect of one species in a 

 tribe may be equally true of every other placed under the 

 same circumstances. We have as yet no direct evidence to 

 the pouat from remains dug out of recent alluvial deposits, 

 nor is there any historical testimony confirming it ; but 

 there are traditions connected with the cosmogonic specula- 

 tions of almost all Eastern nations having reference to a 

 tortoise of such gigantic size, as to be associated in their 

 fabulous accounts with the elephant. Was this tortoise a 

 mere creature of the imagination, or was the idea of it 

 drawn from a reality, like the Colossochelys"? 



Without attempting to follow the tortoise tradition 

 through all its ramifications, we may allude to the interesting 

 fact of its existence even among the natives of America. The 

 Iroqiiois Indians believe that there were originally, before 

 the creation of the globe, six male beings in the air, bvit 

 subject to mortality. There was no female among them to 

 perpetuate their race ; but learning that there was a being of 

 this sort in heaven, one of them undertook the dangerous 

 task of carrying her away. A bird (like the Garuda of 

 Vishnoo, or the Eagle of Jupiter) became the vehicle. He 

 seduced the female by flattery and presents ; she was turned 

 out of heaven by the Supreme Deity, but was fortunately 

 received upon the back of a tortoise, when the otter (an im- 

 portant agent in all the traditions of the American Indians) 

 and the fishes disturbed the mud at the bottom of the ocean, 

 and drawing it up round the tortoise formed a small island, 

 which gradually became the earth. We may trace this tra- 

 dition to an eastern source, from the circumstance that the 

 female is said to have had two sons, one of whom slew the 

 other ; after which she had several children, from whom 

 sprang the human race. 



In this fable we have no comparative data as to the size 

 of the tortoise, but in the Pythagorean cosmogony the infant 

 world is represented as having been placed on the back of an 

 elephant, which was sustained on a huge tortoise. It is in the 

 Hmdoo accounts, however, that we find the fable most cir- 

 cumstantially told, and especially m what relates to the 

 second Avatar of Vishnoo, when the ocean was churned by 

 means of the mountain Mundar placed on the back of the 

 king of the tortoises, and the serpent Asokee used for the 



