Page 61 (part 9)

To me the specific existence of the Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth* . . . For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from 'the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.' It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft-told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognisable, than that uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day ; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are transformations than to believe them to be inventions."** It is shown by the same geologist that man, "successively traced to periods variously estimated from thirty thousand to one million years . . . . . , co-existed with animals which have long since become extinct ( p . 20)." These animals, "weird and terrible," were, to give a few instances -- (1) "Of the genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebrae show them to have attained a length of nearly two hundred feet . . . . . . " The remains of such monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length; (3) the Dinosaurians (in the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains), of still more gigantic proportions; (4) the Atlanto-Saurus immanis, a femur of which alone is over six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in length! But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh-bone over twelve feet in length ( p . 37). Then we read of the monstrous Sivatherium in the Himalayas, the four-horned stag, as large as an elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium: of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation, " Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A . ** Pp. 3 and 4, Introduction to "Mythical Monsters." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 219 THE FLYING DRAGONS. crocodile jaws on a duck's head, etc., etc. All these were co-existent with man, most probably attacked man, as man attacked them ; and we are asked to believe that the said man was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one great man of science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why man should not have been "contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and go back as far as the Secondary Period. "* "It appears," writes the very conservative Professor Jukes, "that the flying dragons of romance had something like a real existence in former ages of the world."** "Does the written history of man," the author goes on to ask, "comprising a few thousand years, embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldea and China, shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition, and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed them with all their civilization;" (p. 17). The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants, themselves smaller than their ancestors the Mastodons, and Hippopotami, are the only surviving relics, and tend to disappear more entirely with every day. Even they have already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in size in the same proportion as men did. For the remains of a pigmy elephant were found ( E. Falconeri ) in the cave deposits of Malta; and the same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy Hippopotami, the former being "only two feet six inches high; or the still-existing Hippopotamus ( Choeropsis ) Liberiensis, which M. Milne-Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height."*** Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy-tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher Chuang, who said that "the things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically speaking, to the things that are unknown";**** and thus they laugh only at their own ignorance. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " The Human Species, " p. 52. ** " Manual of Geology, " p. 301. *** " Recherches sur les Mammiferes, " plate I. **** Preface to "Wonders by Land and Sea," (Shan Hai King).