10 



those on the table before you. But in those days when there were 

 no learned Societies, the love of the marvellous prevailed over all 

 other considerations, and scientific accuracy was of secondary im- 

 portance, And so these remains were always referred to mythical 

 heroes, giants, or dragons. Even these monstrous teeth were 

 believed to be those of men. Measuring a huge leg bone, or- 

 shoulder blade, they calculated by mediaeval methods of geometry 

 and arithmetic, the stature of the giant to whom it had once 

 belonged ; hence we hear of the skeleton of Orestes, 13ft. long, dis- 

 covered in Greece ; of the great giant of Lucerne, 19ft. high, whose 

 figure still appears in the arms of that city ; and of another in 

 Crete forty-six cubits in stature. St. Augustine himself states that 

 he had seen the molar tooth of a man, which would have furnished 

 the substance of a hundred teeth of men of his own day. More 

 than once such teeth have been enshrined in churches as relics of 

 saints, and mammoth bones have been reverently carried in pro- 

 cessions. Time would fail us to notice at length the curious tales 

 about these remains. 



In our own country, and in our own immediate locality, one may 

 almost say the bones and teeth of the Mammoth are common ; we 

 are constantly finding them in brickfields and railway cuttings. 

 On the Continent they are even more plentiful ; and when at last 

 men could not avoid the conclusion that they really did belong to 

 elephants, they exercised their ingenuity in many directions in 

 endeavouring to account for their presence. Some said they were 

 antediluvian, which they certainly were ; others explained their 

 occurrence by the numbers of elephants brought by the Cartha- 

 ginian armies in their invasions of the Roman Empire. 



The grand hunting ground for the fossil ivory derived from these 

 creatures, is, as already stated, beyond all doubt in Siberia, whence 

 tons of it are exported in regular and systematic trade every year. 

 There is scarcely a river or brook from the Urals to Behring Strait, 

 which does not now and again yield its tribute of bones. When 

 the thaw sets in, in the late spring, and the river banks give way 

 under the pressure of rushing waters, then is the time for the ivory 

 hunter. Tusks and bones are seen projecting from the steep sides, 

 and he seldom fails to make a good thing of them. But he does 

 not secure them all. Enormous quantities are swept down by the 

 streams, and carried out to sea ; these are washed up on the low 

 shores of the islands, which are visited by boats in the Summer^ 

 and sledges in the Winter, and the cargoes carried away for export.. 

 One place called the Island of Bones has supplied China for 500 

 years, and the trade is brisk still Now these traders could hardly 

 have carried on this lucrative business for centuries without endea- 

 vouring now and again to satisfy the ever-questioning spirit of man». 

 and asking Whence ? and How ? In the absence of definite infor- 



