768 THE UNIVERSE. 



caverns the bones of bears, hyenas, and other mammals, 

 nothing more was necessary m times of such crednhty to 

 make men assign (as was particularly the case in Franconia) 

 the fossilized remains of these ancient animals to fabulous 

 reptiles. 



It is particularly at the height of the Renaissance that 

 Ave see this love of monstrosity reach its climax; every 

 author then thought himself obliged to devote a few chap- 

 ters of his work to it. Aldrovandus, a naturalist of Bologna, 

 a profoundly learned man, even wrote a big work on mon- 

 sters, in which are delineated some of the most fantastic 

 kind. Ambrose Pard, surgeon to Henry III. of France, 

 though he had travelled with the army, was no less credul- 

 ous than the others. In his celebrated work he represents 

 sirens, monks, and men-at-arms of the sea, all covered with 

 scales, and as fresh as if they had been just withdrawn from 

 the gulfs of Neptune. One asks with astonishment how 

 the old Huguenot could believe such rubbish. I will not 

 speak of the treatise on monsters by Licetus, as that is an 

 important work, in which the anatomist has only exag- 

 gerated some details in order to give interest to his subject. 



But if anything can siu'prise us more it is the fact that 

 the history of monsters is found with all its exaggerations 

 at two periods widely distant from each other. We find 

 it in the height of its extravagances in the middle ages and 

 the Renaissance, and then at the beginning of the present 

 century it returns in order to astonish us by the audacity 

 of its flights. 



In the middle ages it was the soml^re countries of 

 northern Europe that harboured this belief, and it is in 

 the works of Olaus Magnus, the Albertus Magnus of the 

 north, that we find the most incredible display of it. 

 From this work our moderns have taken their horrible 



