outstrip those of yesterday, so also in respect of the organized works of 
creation. Our fathers, indeed, believed with childlike simplicity that 
there had been giants in a former period of the world’s existence, and 
saw in the huge unearthed fragments of the Palseotheria the undeniable 
vestiges of their belief; but it has been left for us, figuratively speaking, 
to make the dry bones live, and to show the true giants of an earlier day ; 
and in doing this, to render justice to our predecessors, by confessing that 
the old legends of monstrous forms and sizes were not all and altogether 
superstitious myths. Sinbad’s roc has not existed; but America and 
Australia both hear witness to a bird as great in form and as powerful 
in structure. The Indian belief of the round world being supported by 
an elephant, which itself stood on a tortoise, may almost be excused 
when the Himalaya has furnished forth a chelonian eighteen feet long 
by seven feet high in the skeleton. 
But are our discoveries of the marvels of animated nature at an end ? 
Surely not; every year produces additions ; from the deep sea, shells and 
molluscs, long believed to be extinct, are drawn forth still in the fresh¬ 
ness of living existence. The Gallipagos Archipelago and the “continent” 
of New Holland continue to present types of organization, both old and 
new ; and what may wander in the unknown interior of African and 
Australian deserts, or lakes, or oases, are still matter of curiosity and 
hope. 
Neither is the sea then become barren to research; as there have 
been more things found in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in our 
philosophy, so also are there more in the waters; much may never be un¬ 
covered, but much, it is to be hoped, will. Be it the part of the true 
votary of the study of nature, to look to her for the development of all 
possible combinations of form and structure; yet, treading in the mediate 
path, not over credulous, or receiving superstitiously every wonderful 
tale. Touching the immediate subject of these pages, we need not, for 
instance, swallow the grave hypothesis of the French naturalist, who 
accounted for the foundering of the “Ville de Paris” and eight other 
ships taken by the English, by the supposition that they were sucked 
down by a schole of colossal cephalopods, over which they chanced to 
sail : yet, on the other hand, let us use the advantages of gathered 
experience, not rudely to reject the statements which honest though 
unscientific witnesses offer for our consideration, because those state¬ 
ments speak of things not already existing in our collections; but rather 
