THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 59 



accounts are the more common with ancient naturalists, because al- 

 most all those whose works remain to us were simple compilers ; but 

 even Aristotle himself has frequently mixed facts borrowed from others 

 with those which he himself has observed ; so that in fact the art of 

 criticism was as little known then by naturalists as by historians, which 

 is saying a great deal. 



After all these reasonings, all these digressions, it results, that all 

 the great animals that are known in the old continent were known to 

 the ancients ; and that the animals described by the ancients, and not 

 now known, were fabulous ; it also results, that very little time elap- 

 sed before all the great animals of the three first known parts of the 

 globe were known by the people who frequented the coasts. 



We may thence conclude, that we have not even any large species 

 to discover in America. If there were any, there exists no cause why 

 we should not have been acquainted with them ; and in fact, for a 

 hundred and fifty years, none have been discovered. The tapir, the 

 jaguar, the puma, the cabiai, the lama, the vigogne, the red wolf, the 

 buffalo, or American bison, the ant-eaters, sloths, and armadilloes, are 

 already in Margrave and in Hernandes, as well as Buffon. We may 

 say that they are there better described, for Buffon has mingled the 

 history of the ant-eaters, misunderstood the jaguar and the red wolf, 

 and confounded the bison of America with the aurochs of Poland. In 

 fact, Pennant is the first naturalist who has properly distinguished the 

 little musk ox, but it had long been pointed out by travellers. The 

 cleft-footed horse of Molina is not described by the first Spanish voy- 

 agers ; but its existence is more than doubtful, and Molina's authority 

 is too dubious to be adopted. It would be possible to characterise 

 better than at present the stags of America and the Indies ; but with 

 them, as with the ancients respecting the various antelopes, a good 

 method of description was wanting, (and not opportunities of seeing 

 them,) that they might be better known. We may then say, that the 

 mouflon of the Blue Mountains is now the only quadruped of America 

 of any size, the discovery of which is entirely modern ; and perhaps it 

 is only a Siberian goat that has crossed the ice. 



How then can we believe that the enormous mastodons, the gigan- 

 tic megatheria, whose remains have been found under the earth in the 

 two Americas, can still exist on that continent ? How could they 

 have escaped those wandering people who incessantly over-run the 

 country, in every corner of it, and who themselves acknowledge that 

 they no longer exist, since they have imagined a fable about their de- 

 struction, saying that they were killed by the Great Spirit, to prevent 

 them from destroying the human race ? But we may see that this 



