408 THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS, [The 10th. ] 
sider a crude invention, to which no importance should be attached. 
But authority, however exalted, has no patent of final adjudication 
in cases where its means of information are confessedly imperfect , 
as compared with those enjoyed by the supporters of a disputed 
position. The learned world was centuries in believing the story 
of Herodotus about little birds resorting to feed on insects within 
the “stretched jaws’ of the crocodile. Bruce all but ruined his 
credit for a time by relating that he had seen the Abyssinians eat 
the raw flesh cut from one of the haunches of a living cow; and 
there are some who, with no more reason, pretend to doubt the 
good faith of a contemporary traveller, who declares that he once 
made a brief excursion on the back of an alligator. The conflicts 
of discovery and opinion engross indeed no small share of the his- 
tory of human knowledge. There are cases, no doubt, in which 
the senses and the judgment of incompetent persons are liable to 
be imposed upon by irrelevant facts created or qualified for the 
occasion. But here there is no hypothesis concerned requiring na- 
ture to be tortured into its service; physiology can have no latent 
objections, ready to start up unawares and make a mockery of 
belicf, because some of the serpent kind are indubitably organized 
for an aquatic medium; the laws of geographical distribution de- 
duced irrespectively, yield their consent, and the integrety of not 
a few of the narrator is unimpeachable. Are we justified in rejec- 
ting the text, because the interpretation may not harmonize with 
our views; in imputing willful dishonesty to those who merely 
describe to the best of their hability what their eyes have disclosed 
to them? We do not despice the mermaid, the triton and siren, 
as altogether imaginary but endeavour to reconcile at least their 
physical attributes with those of the seal or oriental dugong. The 
unicorn is supposed to have original in the narwhal; and the griffin 
is recognized as a well-known friend in an antiquated garb, being 
no other than the tapir, somewhat disfigured by travellers, and 
further indebted to the artist for a pair of wings and an architect- 
ural style of tail. Even the ghost-seer is seldom suspected of inten- 
tional fraud, however justly we may believe to be the dupe of an 
imagination acted on by some positive phenomenon. The collateral 
truths which testify on the affirmative side have been dwelt upon 
to some extent, and shall again be adverted to presently. On the 
other hand, surely there must be something peculiar in the eco- 
nomy of a vast air-breathing race, frequenting well-known tracts and 
yet never visible but by the merest accident; nor is it any suffi- 
