10 
THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE OX. 
By Mr. W. F. Karkeek, V.S., Truro. 
That which peculiarly distinguishes the character of the 
present age from all others that have preceded it, is the restless 
endeavour that exists to explain the cause of every thing, “ in 
the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under 
the earth.” Science appears to have burst all bounds, and is 
aiming to comprehend the universe — and thus it multiplies fields 
of inquiry for all orders of mind. There is no province of 
Nature which it does not invade; for, not content with exploring 
the darkest period of human history, it goes beyond the birth of 
the human race, and studies the stupendous changes which our 
globe experienced for thousands, perhaps millions, of centuries 
before it became prepared and fitted for their habitation. 
A century has scarcely elapsed since the most astonishing 
and fantastic tales w r ere believed of imaginary monsters, such as 
the Monoculi, with one eye in the middle of the forehead, and of 
“ The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders.” 
The Centaur, half man, half horse ; the Pegasus, a winged 
horse ; and the Griffin, alluded to by Eschylus in the tragedy 
of Prometheus ; — 
“Thus the gryphens. 
Those churl and ranc’rous dogs of Jove, avoid 
The Arimaspian troops, whose frowning foreheads 
Glare with one blazing eye.” 
That such should ever have been believed would appear almost 
impossible ; and yet, strange as it may appear, these old tales of 
the ancient poets have no sooner ceased to be credited, than 
they have been superseded by stories stranger still, — of gigantic 
monsters that one time walked the earth or swarm’d the lake, — 
not dim and shadowy phantoms of the imagination, but in all 
the reality of form and structure ; leaving their skeletons to 
be disentombed in after ages from their rocky sepulchres, as 
evidences of a former existence : — so certain it is that truth is 
stranger than fiction. 
On no subject has greater ignorance prevailed for a long 
period than that of the creation of animals. Accustomed to con- 
sider the whole of Nature as having sprung out of nothing, in the 
course of a few days, at the Divine command, and erroneously 
deeming this belief as essentially connected with the funda- 
