Cuare. III.] THE ELEPHANT. 103 
of the Lower Empire and the Romancers of the middle 
ages; and Putz, a contemporary of PETRARCH and 
Dante, who in the early part of the fourteenth century, 
addressed his didactic poem on the elephant to the Em- 
peror Andronicus II., untaught by the exposition of 
ARISTOTLE, still clung to the old delusion, 
“Tiddes 5€ ToUT@ Oadua Kal capes Tépas, 
Obs, od Kabdmep TaAAa TaY SdwY yevn, 
EtwOe taveiv e dvdpSper khacudtev* 
Kal yap orBapois cuvredévres dara, 
Kal 77 wAadapé tov opupay Karacrdcet, 
Ka) 7i mpbs &p0pa ta oxerdv Sroxpicet, 
Niy eis tévous byouat, viv eis Spécess, 
Tas mavtodaras edpouds Tod Onplov. 
* * * * * 
Bpaxurépous byras 8& Tay bmiablwv 
*Avauiréxrws olda, Tobs eumpoabious: 
Toros édépas evradels Sowep arias 
*Opboorddnv &xauwros brvwbtTwy péver.” ; 
v. 106, &e. 
Soinus introduced the same fable into his Polyhistor ; 
and Dicu11, the Irish commentator of the ninth century, 
who had an opportunity of seeing the elephant sent 
by Haroun Alraschid as a present to Charlemagne! in 
the year 802, corrects the error, and attributes its per- 
petuation to the circumstance that the joints in the 
elephant’s leg are not very apparent, except when he 
lies down.? 
It is a strong illustration of the vitality of error, 
that the delusion thus exposed by Dicuil in the ninth 
century, was revived by Marrnew Panis in the thir- 
teenth; and stranger still, that Matthew not only saw 
} Ecmuarp, Vita Karoli, c.xvi. Imperatoris Karoli viderunt. Sed, 
and Annales Francorum, a.p. 810. 
2 “Sed idem Julius, unum de 
elephantibus mentiens, falso loqui- 
tur; dicens elephantem nunquam 
jacere; dum ille sicut bos certissime 
jacet, ut populi communiter regni 
Francorum elephantem, in tempore 
forsitan, ideo hoc de elephante ficte 
zstimando scriptum est, eo quod 
genua et suffragines sui nisi quando 
jacet, non palam apparent.” —Dr- 
curtus, De Mensura Orbis Terre, 
e. Vil. 
H4 
