622 THE UNIVERSE. 



sils, tlie love of the marvellous which preclominated 

 over our ancestors, made them misunderstand nature, 

 and these relics were almost constantly assigned to some 

 extraordinary creature or other. The bones of bears, 

 which were obtained from the caves of Franconia, jDassed in 

 Germany for a sovereign antidote, and were sold in all the 

 apothecaries' shops as the remains of the fabulous unicorn. 



For the elephants and mastodons there was generally 

 another story. As many of the bones of these animals 

 present in their forms striking resemblances to those of 

 man, at an epoch when the imagination of our forefathers, 

 roused to enthusiasm by the legends of olden times, elevated 

 the stature of heroes to the height of their heroic poems, 

 the bones of the great mammals found in the earth were 

 constantly referred to some celebrated personage. 



Thus, according to the statement of Pausanias, the 

 knee-cap of an elephant, as large as a circus discus, found 

 near Salamis, was considered as having belonged to 

 Ajax. The Spartans prostrated themselves before the 

 skeleton of one of these animals, in which they thought 

 they recognized the skeleton of Orestes. Some remains 

 of a mammoth found in Sicily were considered as having 

 belonged to Polyphemus! . . . 



The learned were not more exempt than the vulgar from 

 these kinds of errors. Father Kircher, in his remarkable 

 work on the subterranean Avorld [Munchis Siihterraneus), 

 gives figures of these giants alongside of men of ordinary 

 size. 



The skeleton of an elephant discovered in Switzerland, 

 at tlie foot of a tree torn up l)y the wind, was considered 

 by F. Plater, the anatomist, as the skeleton of a giant 

 nineteen feet high. He even restored it by means of a 

 sketch which became celebrated, and which was to be seen 



