APPENDIX TO THE CHAPTER ON THE SEA-SERPENT.

The Shan.[331]

“The Shan belongs to the snake species.”

“The Tsah Ping Shu (Work on Military Science) says: ‘In drilling an army,[332] when you arrange it like the Shan expelling its breath, its appearance is like that of a snake, but the waist is large; below there are scales, running backwards.’

“One says that its form is like that of the Ch‘i-lung, which has ears and horns and a mane of a red colour. When it exhales its breath, it forms a cloud just like a palace or tower, looking as if its walls are moving in a cloud of mist, or like a weary bird flying above. This makes everyone feel very happy until the exhalation or snorting of the breath is finished.

“There is a popular saying about building a Shan tower. When the sky appears to rain you can see a resemblance of it.

“The Shi-Ki (Book of Odes or Classical Poetry) uses the expression, ‘The Shan’s breath forms a tower’; it is in allusion to this.

“At the present day it is said that the Chi (a pheasant or francolin[333]) and the snake copulate and produce the Shan.

“The oily substance of Shan combined with wax makes the Chinese wax candles, the fragrance of which, when burning, can be recognized for one hundred feet in all directions; and the smoke emitted from the flame forms the appearance of a tower.”

“The Pih T‘an (Familiar Stories) says that at Tang-cheu (in Shantung), in the midst of the sea, there are often clouds arise and appear like the imperial palace, or towers of the city walls, and there is also an appearance of people, carriages, and horses busily engaged [mirage?]. They call this phenomenon ‘the market of the sea,’ while others say it is but the breath of the Shan Kiao.

“The Wu LÉi Siang Kan Chi says the Shan is but another sort of dragon, and can be found in some of the ponds and wells. They throw out the air, forming rain as in the locality of Wu San Yin.

“The P‘i Ya Kwang Yao says, when a snake transforms it becomes a shan, in the likeness of the Kiao, but without paws.”

Section II.

“The twelfth chapter of Ching KiÜn Chw’en says that HÜ Ching KiÜn, author of the above book, met a youth, quite handsome in his apparel. The youth pretended to be very modest, Hu KiÜn knowing all the time that he was a Kiao in another form. So he told his followers, ‘I regret to think that the province of Kiang-si will often meet with the misfortune of inundation if we do not exterminate that Kiao Shan, and are not careful to prevent its escape.’ But the Shan knew what Hu KiÜn was saying, and gradually slipped away to a place called Sung-sha-cheu, where he transformed himself into a yellow ox. But at the same time Ching KiÜn also transformed himself into a black ox, tying a handkerchief over his neck to distinguish him from the other ox, and ordered his disciple, Shi Tai Yu, to use his sword, and thrust at the left thigh, because he had entered within the city wall, in the western part of which there is a well. By jumping this well he found a road to Tau-cheu, and once more transformed himself into a handsome youth, and by so doing got married to the daughter of a magistrate called Ku Yu, with plenty of jewels and gold. Then Ching came to see Ku Yu and said, ‘I hear that you have a very noble son-in-law. May I see him?’ Ku answered ‘Yes,’ and told him to come out. But he excused himself upon account of sickness, and hid himself. Then Ching KiÜn, saying, ‘The dangerous things of the rivers and the lake are old devils, and they dare to transform themselves into human beings,’ ordered the son-in-law to transform himself into his original form, and hid himself beneath the table. Then the magistrate said, ‘Kill this,’ and they did so. Then Kiun sprinkled water on the two sons, and they were immediately transformed into Shan. [There must be children born from the marriage.—Translator.] He advised Ku Yu that he must put them away immediately, or the whole house would be in danger of breaking.”

“The Tai Ping Kwang Ki says that the lake of Wan Tun, at FÌ Chi, contains a Shan which often fought with the Shan of Lake Su. Near this lake is a place called Yao, where there lived a man called Ch‘ang Sing Shan, of great bravery, and an expert archer. He once dreamed that a Shan snake was transformed into a Taouist, and then it said to him: ‘I am endangered by the Shan of the lake of Lu. Can your honour assist me? if so I will reward you heavily. The tight white chain is me.’ Next day Sing Shan went with a youth of Yao to the shore of the lake and dreamed. He waited until the waves rose and the surf struck the shore, making a noise like thunder. He saw two oxen coming, one with a white belly and legs; then Sing Shan discharged an arrow at it, and it turned out to be a Shan. The water immediately turned into blood, and the Shan, after receiving the wound, tried to return to the lake of Lu, but died before it reached there.”

Kang Hi Dictionary.

“The Shan Kiao belongs to the Kiao species, and also has the appearance of a snake. It has horns like a dragon; the mane is red below the waist; all the scales are projecting. It eats swallows, and can emit an air which appears like a tower.

“Again, any turtle when old enough may be called a Shan.”

LONDON:
PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.

Footnotes:

[1] This tributary offering is a common feature in dragon legends. A good example is that given by El Edrisi in his history of the dragon destroyed by Alexander the Great in the island of Mostachin (one of the Canaries?).

[2] The latest writer on this point summarizes his views, in his opening remarks, as follows:—“The science of heraldry has faithfully preserved to modern times various phases of some of those remarkable legends which, based upon a study of natural phenomena, exhibit the process whereby the greater part of mythology has come into existence. Thus we find the solar gryphon, the solar phoenix, a demi-eagle displayed issuing from flames of fire; the solar lion and the lunar unicorn, which two latter noble creatures now harmoniously support the royal arms. I propose in the following pages to examine the myth of the unicorn, the wild, white, fierce, chaste, moon, whose two horns, unlike those of mortal creatures, are indissolubly twisted into one; the creature that endlessly fights with the lion to gain the crown or summit of heaven, which neither may retain, and whose brilliant horn drives away the darkness and evil of the night even as we find in the myth, that Venym is defended by the horn of the unicorn.”—The Unicorn; a Mythological Investigation. Robert Brown, jun., F.S.A. London, 1881.

[3] “The midgard or world-serpent we have already become tolerably well acquainted with, and recognise in him the wild tumultuous sea. Thor contended with him; he got him on his hook, but did not succeed in killing him. We also remember how Thor tried to lift him in the form of a cat. The North abounds in stories about the sea-serpent, which are nothing but variations of the original myths of the Eddas. Odin cast him into the sea, where he shall remain until he is conquered by Thor in Ragnarok.”—Norse Mythology, p. 387. R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1879.

[4] Vide Anderson.

[5] Just as even the greatest masters of fiction adapt but do not originate. Harold Skimpole and Wilkins Micawber sat unconsciously for their portraits in real life, and the most charming characters and fertile plots produced by that most prolific of all writers, A. Dumas, are mere elaborations of people and incidents with which historical memoirs provided him.

[6] Atlantis; the Antediluvian World. J. Donelly, New York, 1882. The author has amassed, with untiring labour, a large amount of evidence to prove that the island of Atlantis, in place of being a myth or fable of Plato, really once existed; was the source of all modern arts and civilization; and was destroyed in a catastrophe which he identifies with the Biblical Deluge.

[7] So also, Father Stanislaus Arlet, of the Society of Jesus, writing to the General of the Society in 1698 respecting a new Mission in Peru, and speaking of a Peruvian tribe calling themselves Canisian, says: “Having never before seen horses, or men resembling us in colour and dress, the astonishment they showed at our first appearance among them was a very pleasing spectacle to us, the sight of us terrifying them to such a degree that the bows and arrows fell from their hand; imagining, as they afterwards owned, that the man, his hat, his clothes, and the horse he rode upon, composed but one animal.”

[8] The Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, done into English by H. C. Gent, London, 1653, p. 109. The vindication of Pinto’s reputation for veracity will doubtless one day be, to a great extent, effected, for although his interesting narrative is undoubtedly embroidered with a rich tissue of falsity, due apparently to an exaggerated credulity upon his part, and systematic deception upon that of his Chinese informants, he certainly is undeserving of the wholesale condemnation of which Congreve was the reflex when he made Foresight, addressing Sir Sampson Legend, say: “Thou modern Mandeville, Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”—Love for Love, Act. 2, Scene 1. There are many points in his narrative which are corroborated by history and the accounts of other voyages; and it must be remembered that, although the major part of the names of places and persons which he gives are now unrecognisable, yet this may be due to alterations from the lapse of time, and from the difficulty of recognising the true original Chinese or Japanese word under those produced by the foreign mode of transliteration in vogue in those days. Thus the Port Liampoo of Pinto is now and has been for many years past only known as Ningpo, the first name being a term of convenience, used by the early Portuguese voyagers, and long since abandoned. Just as the wonderful Quinsay of Marco Polo (still known by that name in Pinto’s time) has been only successfully identified (with Hangchow-fu) through the antiquarian research of Colonel Yule. So also the titles of Chaems, Tutons, Chumbins, Aytons, Anchacy’s, which Pinto refers to (p. 108), are only with difficulty recognisable in those respectively of Tsi‘ang (a Manchu governor), Tu-tung (Lieutenant-General), Tsung-ping (Brigadier-General), Tao-tai [??] (Intendant of Circuit) and Ngan-ch‘a She-sze (Provincial Judge), as rendered by the modern sinologue Mayers in his Essay on the Chinese Government, Shanghai, 1878. The incidental references to the country, people, habits, and products, contained in the chapter describing his passage in captivity from Nanquin to Pequin are true to nature, and the apparently obviously untruthful statement which he makes of the employment by the King of Tartary of thousands of rhinoceri both as beasts of burthen and articles of food (p. 158) is explicable, I think, on the supposition that some confusion has arisen, either in translation or transcription, between rhinoceros and camel. Anyone who has seen the long strings of camels wending their way to Pekin from the various northern roads through the passes into Mongolia, would readily believe that a large transport corps of them could easily be amassed by a despotic monarch; while the vast numbers of troops to which Pinto makes reference are confirmed by more or less authentic histories.

[9] “I was myself an eye-witness of two such discoveries and helped to gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an imposture.”—Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I. to Schliemann’s Ilios. Murray, 1880.

[10] “But ask them to credit an electric telegram, to understand a steam-engine, to acknowledge the microscopic revelations spread out before their eyes, to put faith in the Atlantic cable or the East India House, and they will tell you that you are a barbarian with blue eyes, a fan kwai, and a sayer of that which is not. The dragon and the phoenix are true, but the rotifer and the message, the sixty miles an hour, the cable, and the captive kings are false.”—Household Words, October 30th, 1855.

[11] Address delivered to the Biological Section of the British Association. Glasgow, 1876.

[12] In 1854 a communication from the Torquay Natural History Society, confirming previous accounts by Mr. Goodwin Austen, Mr. Vivian, and the Rev. Mr. McEnery, “that worked flints occurred in Kents Hole with remains of extinct species,” was rejected as too improbable for publication.

[13] “She is set down a thorough heretic, not at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an inventor of false facts in science.”—Gosse, Romance of Nat. Hist., 2nd Series, p. 227.

[14] Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 60, April 1877.

[15] “By the kindness of my friend, Mr. Bartlett, I have been enabled to examine a most beautiful Japanese carving in ivory, said to be one hundred and fifty years old, and called by the Japanese net suke or togle. These togles are handed down from one generation to the next, and they record any remarkable event that happens to any member of a family. This carving is an inch and a half long, and about as big as a walnut. It represents a lady in a quasi-leaning attitude, and at first sight it is difficult to perceive what she is doing; but after a while the details come out magnificently. The unfortunate lady has been seized by an octopus when bathing—for the lady wears a bathing-dress. One extended arm of the octopus is in the act of coiling round the lady’s neck, and she is endeavouring to pull it off with her right hand; another arm of the sea-monster is entwined round the left wrist, while the hand is fiercely tearing at the mouth of the brute. The other arms of the octopus are twined round, grasping the lady’s body and waist—in fact, her position reminds one very much of Laocoon in the celebrated statue of the snakes seizing him and his two sons. The sucking discs of the octopus are carved exactly as they are in nature, and the colour of the body of the creature, together with the formidable aspect of the eye, are wonderfully represented. The face of this Japanese lady is most admirably done; it expresses the utmost terror and alarm, and possibly may be a portrait. So carefully is the carving executed that the lady’s white teeth can be seen between her lips. The hair is a perfect gem of work; it is jet black, extended down the back, and tied at the end in a knot; in fact, it is so well done that I can hardly bring myself to think that it is not real hair, fastened on in some most ingenious manner; but by examining it under a powerful magnifying glass I find it is not so—it is the result of extraordinary cleverness in carving. The back of the little white comb fixed into the thick of the black hair adds to the effect of this magnificent carving of the hair. I congratulate Mr. Bartlett on the acquisition of this most beautiful curiosity. There is an inscription in Japanese characters on the underneath part of the carving, and Mr. Bartlett and myself would, of course, only be too glad to get this translated.”—Frank Buckland, in Land and Water.

[16] Max MÜller, Science of Language, 4th edition, p. 163-165. London, 1864.

[17] Science of Language, p. 168.

[18] “When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game, the word not being used in its old sense of discovery but in its modern of creation. As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the great (mis?) guiding spirit, À priori by name, who furnishes philosophers with their omniscience pro re natÂ, whispers that no such thing can be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax. The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been calculated was not the planet but another which had clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the true body. The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the disposition to hoax. Who was it that first announced that the classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?”—Macmillan, 1860.

[19] Poetic Epistles, Bk. iii., Ep. 3.

[20] Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno.

[21] “Having showed the foregoing description of the mountain cow, called by the Spaniards ante [manatee?], to a person of honour, he was pleased to send it to a learned person in Holland.” This learned person discusses it and compares it with the hippopotamus, and winds up by saying, in reference to a description of the habits of the hippopotamus, as noticed at Loango by Captain Rogers, to the effect that when they are in the water they will sink to the bottom, and then walk as on dry ground, “but what he says of her sinking to the bottom in deep rivers, and walking there, if he adds, what I think he supposes, that it rises again, and comes on the land, I much question; for that such a huge body should raise itself up again (though I know whales and great fish can do) transcends the faith of J. H.”—F. J. Knapton, Collection of Voyages, vol. ii., part ii. p. 13. 4 vols., London, 1729.

[22] Historical Account of Discoveries and Travels in Asia. Hugh Murray, F.R.S.E., 3 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1820.

[23] Bk. x., chap. 53.

[24] A writer in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1860 concludes a series of objections to the canal as follows: “And the Emperor must hesitate to identify himself with an operation which might not impossibly come to be designated by posterity as ‘Napoleon’s Folly.’”

[25] The Bower Bird, Ptilonorhyncus holosericeus, and the Garden-building Bird of New Guinea, Amblyornis inornara.

[26] Recherches, &c. des Mammiferes, plate 1. Paris, 1868 to 1874.

[27] “This obstacle was a forest of oaks, not giant oaks, but the very reverse, a forest of dwarf oaks (Quercus nana). Far as the eye could reach extended the singular wood, in which no tree rose above thirty inches in height. Yet was it no thicket, no undergrowth of shrubs, but a true forest of oaks, each tree having its separate stem, its boughs, its lobed leaves, and its bunches of brown acorns.”—Capt. Mayne Reid, The War Trail, chap. lxiv.

[28] Respecting the timber trees of this tract, Dr. Ferdinand von Mueller, the Government botanist, thus writes:—“At the desire of the writer of these pages, Mr. D. Bogle measured a fallen tree of Eucalyptus amygdalina, in the deep recesses of Dandenong, and obtained for it a length of 420 feet, with proportions of width, indicated in a design of a monumental structure placed in the exhibition; while Mr. G. Klein took the measurement of a Eucalyptus on the Black Spur, ten miles distant from Healesville, 480 feet high! In the State forest of Dandenong, it was found by actual measurement that an acre of ground contained twenty large trees of an apparent average height of about 350 feet.”—R. Brough Smyth, The Gold Fields of Victoria. Melbourne, 1869.

[29] “In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for the mind to invent an entirely new fact. There is nothing in the mind of man that has not pre-existed in nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature?”—J. Donelly, Rangarok, p. 119. New York, 1883.

[30] “I conceive that quite a large proportion of the most profound thinkers are satisfied to exert their memory very moderately. It is, in fact, a distraction from close thought to exert the memory overmuch, and a man engaged in the study of an abstruse subject will commonly rather turn to his book-shelves for the information he requires than tax his memory to supply it.”—R. A. Proctor, Pop. Sci. Monthly, Jan. 1874.

[31] “It was through one of these happy chances (so the Brothers Grimm wrote in 1819) that we came to make the acquaintance of a peasant woman of the village of Nieder-Zwehrn, near Cassel, who told us the greater part of the MÄrchen of the second volume, and the most beautiful of it too. She held the old tales firmly in her memory, and would sometimes say that this gift was not granted to everyone, and that many a one could not keep anything in its proper connection. Anyone inclined to believe that tradition is easily corrupted or carelessly kept, and that therefore it could not possibly last long, should have heard how steadily she always abided by her record, and how she stuck to its accuracy. She never altered anything in repeating it, and if she made a slip, at once righted herself as soon as she became aware of it, in the very midst of her tale. The attachment to tradition among people living on in the same kind of life with unbroken regularity, is stronger than we, who are fond of change, can understand.”—Odinic Songs in Shetland. Karl Blind, Nineteenth Century, June 1879.

[32] See quotation from Gladstone, Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1879.

[33] Mr. C. P. Daly, President of the American Geographical Society, informs us, in his Annual Address [for 1880], that in one book found in the royal library at Nineveh, of the date 2000 B.C., there is—

1. A catalogue of stars.

2. Enumeration of twelve constellations forming our present zodiac.

3. The intimation of a Sabbath.

4. A connection indicated (according to Mr. Perville) between the weather and the changes of the moon.

5. A notice of the spots on the sun: a fact they could only have known by the aid of telescopes, which it is supposed they possessed from observations that they have noted down of the rising of Venus, and the fact that Layard found a crystal lens in the ruins of Nineveh. (N.B.—As to the above, I must say that telescopes are not always necessary to see the spots on the sun: these were distinctly visible with the naked eye, in the early mornings, to myself and the officers of the S.S. Scotia, in the Red Sea, in the month of August of 1883, after the great volcanic disturbances near Batavia. The resulting atmospheric effects were very marked in the Red Sea, as elsewhere, the sun, when near the horizon, appearing of a pale green colour, and exhibiting the spots distinctly.)

[34] Ammianus Marcellinus (bk. xxii., ch. xv., s. 20), in speaking of the Pyramids, says: “There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which, it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be lost.”

As affording a minor example of prophesy, I quote a correspondent’s communication, relating to Siam, to the North China Daily News of July 28th, 1881:—“Singularly enough the prevalence of cholera in Siam this season has been predicted for some months. The blossoming of the bamboo (which in India is considered the invariable forerunner of an epidemic) was looked upon as ominous, while the enormous quantity and high quality of the fruit produced was cited as pointing out the overcharge of the earth with matter which, though tending to the development of vegetable life, is deleterious to human. From these and other sources of knowledge open to those accustomed to read the book of nature, the prevalence of cholera, which, since 1873, has been almost unknown in Siam, was predicted and looked for; and, unlike most modern predictions, it has been certainly fulfilled. So common was the belief, that when, some months since, a foreign official in Siamese employ applied for leave of absence, it was opposed by some of the native officials on the ground that he ought to stay and take his chance of the cholera with the rest of them.”

[35] “It is now generally admitted by biologists who have made a study of the Vertebrata that birds have come down to us through the Dinosaurs, and the close affinity of the latter with recent struthious birds will hardly be questioned. The case amounts almost to a demonstration if we compare with Dinosaurs their contemporaries, the Mesozoic birds. The classes of birds and reptiles as now living are separated by a gulf so profound that a few years since it was cited by the opponents of evolution as the most important break in the animal series, and one which that doctrine could not bridge over. Since then, as Huxley has clearly shown, this gap has been virtually filled by the discoveries of bird-like reptiles and reptilian birds. Compsognathus and ArchÆopteryx of the old world, and Icthyornis and Hesperornis of the new, are the stepping-stones by which the evolutionist of to-day leads the doubting brother across the shallow remnant of the gulf, once thought impassable.”—Marsh.

[36] Professor Carl Vogt regards the ArchÆopteryx “as neither reptile nor bird, but as constituting an intermediate type. He points out that there is complete homology between the scales or spines of reptiles and the feathers of birds. The feather of the bird is only a reptile’s scale further developed, and the reptile’s scale is a feather which has remained in the embryonic condition. He considers the reptilian homologies to preponderate.”

[37] A similar habit is ascribed by the Chinese to the mammoth and to the gigantic Sivatherium (Fig. 6, p. 39), a four-horned stag, which had the bulk of an elephant, and exceeded it in height. It was remarkable for being in some respects between the stags and the pachyderms. The Dinotherium (Fig. 8), which had a trunk like an elephant, and two inverted tusks, presented in its skull a mixture of the characteristics of the elephant, hippopotamus, tapir, and dugong. Its remains occur in the Miocene of Europe.

Fig. 8.—Dinotherium. (After Figuier.)

[38] “It enters Europe early in April, spreads over France, Britain, Denmark, and the south of Sweden, which it reaches by the beginning of May. It does not enter Brittany, the Channel Islands, or the western part of England, never visiting Wales, except the extreme south of Glamorganshire, and rarely extending farther north than Yorkshire.”—A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, vol. i. p. 21. London, 1876.

[39] Bible Customs in Bible Lands. By H. J. Van Lennep, D.D. 1875. Quoted in Nature, March 24, 1881.

[40] Origin of Species, C. Darwin, 5th edit. 1869.

[41] Thus Mr. Wallace considers that the identity of the small fish, Galaxias attenuatus, which occurs in the mountain streams of Tasmania, with one found in those of New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, and the temperate regions of South America, cannot be considered as demonstrating a land connection between these places within the period of its specific existence. For there is a possibility that its ova have been transported from one point to another on floating ice; and for similar reasons fresh-water fish generally are unsafe guides to a classification of zoological regions. Mr. Darwin has shown (Origin of Species, and Nature, vol. xviii. p. 120 and vol. xxv. p. 529) that mollusca can be conveyed attached to or entangled in the claws of migratory birds. Birds themselves are liable to be blown great distances by gales of wind. Beetles and other flying insects may be similarly transferred. Reptiles are occasionally conveyed on floating logs and uprooted trees. Mammals alone appear to be really trustworthy guides towards such a classification, from their being less liable than the other classes to accidental dispersion.

[42] MÉmoires concernant l’histoire, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin, vol. iv. p. 481.

[43] The Natural History of Pliny, J. Bostock and H. T. Riley, book viii. chap iv.

[44] The Voyage of the Vega, A. E. NordenskjÖld. London, 1881.

[45] On the Range of the Mammoth in Space and Time, by W. B. Dawkins, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1879, p. 138.

[46] The notice is taken from Les Peuples du Caucause, ou Voyage d’Abou-el-Cassim, par M. C. D’Ohsson, p. 80, as follows:—“On trouve souvent dans la Boulgarie des os (fossils) d’une grandeur prodigieuse. J’ai vu une dent qui avait deux palmes de large sur quatre de long, et un crÂne qui ressemblait À une hutte (Arabe). On y dÉterre des dents semblables aux dÉfenses d’ÉlÉphants, blanche comme la neige et pesant jusqu’ À deux cents menns. On ne sait pas À quel animal elles out appartenu, mais on les transporte dans le Khoragur (Kiva), oÙ elles se vendent À grand prix. On en fait des peignes, des vases, et d’autres objets, comme on faÇonne l’ivoire; toute fois cette substance est plus dure que l’ivoire; jamais elle ne se brise.”

[47] The World before the Deluge, L. Figuier. London, 1865.

[48] According to Woodward, over two thousand grinders were dredged up by the fishermen of Happisburgh in the space of thirteen years; and other localities in and about England are also noted.—Dana’s Manual of Geology, p. 564.

[49] Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 185, 2nd edit., 1863.

[50] Fr. ??a??a “a sword,” and ?d??? “a tooth.”

[51] From ast?? “a teat,” and ?d??? “a tooth.”

[52] PalÆontology, R. Owen. Edinburgh, 1860.

[53] The British Lion, W. Boyd Dawkins, Contemporary Review, 1882.

[54] The Moa was associated with other species also nearly or totally extinct: some belonging to the same genus, others to those of Papteryx, of Nestor, and of Notornis. One survivor of the latter was obtained by Mr. Gideon Mantell, and described by my father, Mr. John Gould, in 1850. I believe the Nestor is still, rarely, met with. Mr. Mantell is of opinion that the Moa and his congeners continued in existence long after the advent of the aboriginal Maori. Mr. Mantell discovered a gigantic fossil egg, presumably that of the Moa.

[55] A. E. NordenskjÖld, The Voyage of the ‘Vega,’ vol. i. p. 272, et seq. London, 1881.

[56] Pliny, Nat. Hist., Bk. x., chap. xvii., and Bk. xxx., chap. liii.

[57] The Romance of Natural History, by P. H. Gosse, 2nd Series, London 1875.

[58] Pop. Sci. Monthly, October 1878.

[59] Excelsior, vol. iii. London, 1855.

[60] The Chinese Classics, vol. iii. p. 1, by James Legge, B.D.

[61] Inaugural Address by President, T. W. Kingsmill, North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.

[62] Chabas, Études sur l’AntiquitÉ Historique, d’aprÈs les sources Égyptiennes.

[63] Subsequently to 1874.

[64] O. F. von Mollendorf, Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 2, and T. W. Kingsmill, “The Border Lands of Geology and History,” Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1877.

[65] “Intercourse of China with Eastern Turkestan and the adjacent country in the second century B.C.,” T. W. Kingsmill, Journal of North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. 14.

[66] The Natural History of Pliny. Translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Biley, 6 vols. Bohn, London, 1857.

[67] Æliani de Natura Animalium, F. Jacobs. JenÆ, 1832.

[68] GÉographie d’Edrisi, traduite de l’Arabe en FranÇais, P. AmÉdÉe Jaubert, 2 vols. Paris, 1836.

[69] Phil. Trans., vol. cxlix. p. 43, 1859; vol. clxxi. p. 1,037, 1880; vol. clxxii. p. 547, 1881.

[70] Description of some New Species and Genera of Reptiles from Western Australia, discovered by John Gould, Esq., Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. vii. p. 88, 1841.

[71] “We shall, I think, eventually more fully recognise that, as is the case with the periods of the day, each of the larger geological divisions follows the other, without any actual break or boundary; and that the minor subdivisions are like the hours on the clock, useful and conventional rather than absolutely fixed by any general cause in Nature.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1875.

“With regard to stratigraphical geology, the main foundations are already laid, and a great part of the details filled in. The tendency of modern discoveries has already been, and will probably still be, to fill up those breaks, which, according to the view of many, though by no means all geologists, are so frequently assumed to exist between different geological periods and to bring about a more full recognition of the continuity of geological time. As knowledge increases, it will, I think, become more and more apparent that all existing divisions of time are to a considerable extent local and arbitrary. But, even when this is fully recognised, it will still be found desirable to retain them, if only for the sake of convenience and approximate precision.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.

[72] “It was not until January 1832, that the second volume of the Principles was published, when it was received with as much favour as the first had been. It related more especially to the changes in the organic world, while the former volume had treated mainly of the inorganic forces of nature. Singularly enough, some of the points which were seized on by his great fellow-labourer Murchison for his presidential address to this Society in 1832, as subjects for felicitation, are precisely those which the candid mind of Lyell, ever ready to attach the full value to discoveries or arguments from time to time brought forward, even when in opposition to his own views, ultimately found reason to modify. We can never, I think, more highly appreciate Sir Charles Lyell’s freshness of mind, his candour and love of truth, than when we compare certain portions of the first edition of the Principles with those which occupy the same place in the last, and trace the manner in which his judicial intellect was eventually led to conclusions diametrically opposed to those which he originally held. To those acquainted only with the latest editions of the Principles, and with his Antiquity of Man, it may sound almost ironical in Murchison to have written, ‘I cannot avoid noticing the clear and impartial manner in which the untenable parts of the dogmas concerning the alteration and transmutation of species and genera are refuted, and how satisfactorily the author confirms the great truth of the recent appearance of man upon our planet.’

“By the work (Principles of Geology, vol. iii.), as a whole, was dealt the most telling blow that had ever fallen upon those to whom it appears ‘more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past than patiently to explore the realities of the present,’ while the earnest and careful endeavour to reconcile the former indications of change with the evidence of gradual mutation now in progress, or which may be in progress, received its greatest encouragement. The doctrines which Hutton and Playfair had held and taught assumed new and more vigorous life as better principles were explained by their eminent successor, and were supported by arguments which, as a whole, were incontrovertible.”—Annual Address, President of Geological Society, 1876.

“But, as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of the record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proof of creation without any indication of development. The Silurian rocks, as regards oceanic life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved. Yet there are no fish. The Devonian age followed tranquilly and without a break, and in the Devonian sea, suddenly, fish appear, appear in shoals, and in form of the highest and most perfect type.”—The Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, p. 45, London, 1869.

[73] T. Mellard Reade, “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,” Proceedings, Royal Society, London, vol. xxviii., p. 281.

[74] Scientific American, Supplement, February 1881.

[75] Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. xv. No. 82, 1866.

[76] AthenÆum, August 25, 1860, &c.

[77] The mass of astronomers, however, deny that this is possible to any very great extent.

[78] James Croll, F.R.S., &c., Climate and Time in their Geological Relations.

[79] Figs. 19 and 21 are taken, by permission of Edmund Christy, Esq., from ReliquiÆ AquitanicÆ, &c., London, 1875.

[80] In some cases as much as 150 feet.

[81] “Starting from the opinion generally accepted among geologists, that man was on the earth at the close of the Glacial epoch, Professor B. F. Mudge adduces evidence to prove that the antiquity of man cannot be less than 200,000 years.

“His argument, as given in the Kansas City Review of Science, is about as follows:—

“After the Glacial epoch, geologists fix three distinct epochs, the Champlain, the Terrace, and the Delta, all supposed to be of nearly equal lengths.

“Now we have in the delta of the Mississippi a means of measuring the duration of the third of these epochs.

“For a distance of about two hundred miles of this delta are seen forest growths of large trees, one after the other, with interspaces of sand. There are ten of these distinct forest growths, which have begun and ended one after the other. The trees are the bald cypress (Taxodium) of the Southern States, and some of them were over twenty-five feet in diameter. One contained over five thousand seven hundred annual rings. In some instances these huge trees have grown over the stumps of others equally large, and such instances occur in all, or nearly all, of the ten forest beds. This gives to each forest a period of 10,000 years.

“Ten such periods give 100,000 years, to say nothing of the time covered by the interval between the ending of one forest and the beginning of another, an interval which in most cases was considerable.

“‘Such evidence,’ writes Professor Mudge, ‘would be received in any court of law as sound and satisfactory. We do not see how such proof is to be discarded when applied to the antiquity of our race.

“‘There is satisfactory evidence that man lived in the Champlain epoch. But the Terrace epoch, or the greater part of it, intervenes between the Champlain and the Delta epochs, thus adding to my 100,000 years.

“‘If only as much time is given to both those epochs as to the Delta period, 200,000 years is the total result.’”—Popular Science Monthly, No. 91, vol. xvi. No. 1, p. 140, November 1878.

[82] Such as the destruction of the Alexandrine Library on three distinct occasions, (1) upon the conquest of Alexandria by Julius CÆsar, B.C. 48; (2) in A.D. 390; and, (3) by Amrou, the general of the Caliph Omar, in 640, who ordered it to be burnt, and so supplied the baths with fuel for six months. Again, the destruction of all Chinese books by order of Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, the founder of the Imperial branch of the Tsin dynasty, and the first Emperor of United China; the only exceptions allowed being those relating to medicine, divination, and husbandry. This took place in the year 213 B.C.

[83] The Chinese have used composite blocks (wood engraved blocks with many characters, analogous to our stereotype plates) from an early period. May not the brick-clay tablets preserved in the Imperial Library at Babylon have been used for striking off impressions on some plastic material, just as rubbings may be taken from the stone drums in China: may not the cylinders with inscribed characters have been used in some way or other as printing-rollers for propagating knowledge or proclamations?

[84] As, for example, the old canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, in reference to which Herodotus says (Euterpe, 158), “Neco was the son of Psammitichus, and became King of Egypt: he first set about the canal that leads to the Red Sea, which Darius the Persian afterwards completed. Its length is a voyage of four days, and in width it was dug so that two triremes might sail rowed abreast. The water is drawn into it from the Nile, and it enters it a little above the city Bubastis, passes near the Arabian city Patumos, and reaches to the Red Sea.” In the digging of which one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians perished in the reign of Neco.

[85] The co-called tanks at Aden, reservoirs constructed one below the other, in a gorge near the cantonments, are as perfect now as they were when they left the hand of the contractor or royal engineer in the time of Moses.

[86] In the 29th year of the Emperor Kwei [B.C. 1559] they chiselled through mountains and tunnelled hills, according to the Bamboo Books.

[87] An interesting line of investigation might be opened up as to the origin of inventions and the date of their migrations. The Chinese claim the priority of many discoveries, such as chess, printing, issue of bank-notes, sinking of artesian wells, gunpowder, suspension bridges, the mariner’s compass, &c. &c. I extract two remarkable wood-cuts from the San Li T’u, one appended here showing the origin of our college cap; the other, in the chapter on the Unicorn, appearing to illustrate the fable of the Sphynx.

Fig. 22.—Royal Diadem
of the Chen Dynasty.
(From the San Li T’u.)

I also give a series of engravings, reduced facsimiles of those contained in a celebrated Chinese work on antiquities, showing the gradual evolution of the so-called Grecian pattern or scroll ornamentation, and origination of some of the Greek forms of tripods.

[88] “The old Troglodytes, pile villagers, and bog people, prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would be only too happy to possess such.”—A. Mitchell, The Past in the Present, Edinburgh, 1880.

[89] I have given in the annexed plates a few examples of the early hieroglyphics on which the modern Chinese system of writing is based, selected from a limited number collected by the early Jesuit fathers in China, and contained in the MÉmoirs concernant l’Histoire, &c. des Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin, vol. i., Paris, 1776. The modern Chinese characters conveying the same idea are attached, and their derivation from the pictorial hieroglyphics, by modification or contraction, is in nearly all cases obvious.

[90] “The Porcelain Tower of Nankin, once one of the seven wonders of the world, can now only be found piecemeal in walls of peasants’ huts.”—Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 372.

[91] The outer casing of the pyramid of Cheops, which Herodotus (Euterpe, 125) states to have still exhibited in his time an inscription, telling how much was expended (one thousand six hundred talents of silver) in radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen, has entirely disappeared; as also, almost completely, the marble casing of the adjacent pyramid of Sen-Saophis. According to tradition the missing marbles in each instance were taken to build palaces with in Cairo.

[92] “The work of destruction was carried on methodically. From the Caspian Sea to the Indus, the Mongols ruined, within four years, more than four centuries of continuous labour have since restored. The most flourishing cities became a mass of ruins: Samarkand, Bokhara, Nizabour, Balkh, and Kandahar shared in the same destruction.”—Gutzlaff, Hist. China, vol. i. p. 358.

[93] “An army of 700,000 Mongols met half the number of Mahommedans.”—Ibid. p. 357.

[94] Those interested in the subject may read with great advantage the section on dynamical geology in Dana’s valuable manual. He points out the large amount of wear accomplished by wind carrying sand in arid regions, by seeds falling in some crevice, and bursting rocks open through the action of the roots developed from their sprouting, to say nothing of the more ordinarily recognized destructive agencies of frost and rain, carbonic acid resulting from vegetable decomposition, &c.

[95] Darwin, in Vegetable Mould and Earth-worms, has shown that earthworms play a considerable part in burying old buildings, even to a depth of several feet.

[96] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, Article “Deluge,” EncyclopÆdia Britannica, 1877. FranÇois Lenormant, “The Deluge, its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879.

[97] Bunsen estimates that 20,000 years were requisite for the formation of the Chinese language. This, however, is not conceded by other philologists.

[98] Rawlinson quotes the African type on the Egyptian sculptures as being identical with that of the negro of the present day.

[99] “While the tradition of the Deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogenic speculations, have not afforded one, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm. When the Greeks told the Egyptian priests of the Deluge of Deucalion, their reply was that they had been preserved from it as well as from the conflagration produced by Phaeton; they even added that the Hellenes were childish in attaching so much importance to that event, as there had been several local catastrophes resembling it.”—Lenormant, Contemporary Review, November 1879.

[100] FranÇois Lenormant, “The Deluge; its Traditions in Ancient Histories,” Contemporary Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 465.

[101] Here several verses are wanting.

[102] “The water of the twilight at break of day,” one of the personifications of rain.

[103] The god of thunder.

[104] The god of war and death.

[105] The ChaldÆo-Assyrian Hercules.

[106] The superior heaven of the fixed stars.

[107] Vases of the measure called in Hebrew SeÄh. This relates to a detail of the ritualistic prescriptions for sacrifice.

[108] These metaphorical expressions appear to designate the rainbow.

[109] The god of epidemics.

[110] It is probably as much from a superstitious sentiment as upon merely physical grounds that many of the deserted cities in Asia have been abandoned; while, as a noticeable instance, we may quote Gour, the ruined capital of Bengal, which is computed to have extended from fifteen to twenty miles along the bank of the river, and three in depth. The native tradition is that it was struck by the wrath of the gods in the form of an epidemic which slew the whole population. Another case is the reputed presence of a ruined city, in the vicinity of the populous city of Nanking, and at some distance from the right bank of the river Yangtsze, of which the walls only remain, and of the history of which those in the vicinity profess to have lost all record.

[111] i.e. (according to the Historical Records) a carriage to travel along the dry land, a boat to travel along the water, a sledge to travel through miry places, and, by using spikes, to travel on the hills.

[112] Balfour, North China Daily News, Feb. 11, 1881.

[113] Dr. Schliemann found a vase in the lowest strata of his excavations at Hissarlik with an inscription in an unknown language.

Six years ago the Orientalist E. Burnouf declared it to be in Chinese, for which he was generally laughed at at the time.

The Chinese ambassador at Berlin, Li Fang-pau, has read and translated the inscription, which states that three pieces of linen gauze are packed in the vase for inspection.

The Chinese ambassador fixes the date of the inscription at about 1200 B.C., and further states that the unknown characters so frequently occurring on the terra cotta are also in the Chinese language, which would show that at this remote period commercial intercourse existed between China and the eastern shores of Asia Minor and Greece.—Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 98, p. 176, June 1880.

[114] Pierre Bergeron suggests that Solomon’s fleets, starting from Ezion-geber (subsequently Berenice and now Alcacu), arrived at Babelmandeb, and then divided, one portion going to Malacca, Sumatra, or Java, the other to Sofala, round Africa, and returning by way of Cadiz and the Mediterranean to Joppa.

[115] There are various accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa in old times. For example, Herodotus (Melpomene, 42): “Libya shows itself to be surrounded by water, except so much of it as borders upon Asia. Neco, King of Egypt, was the first whom we know of that proved this; he, when he had ceased digging the canal leading from the Nile to the Arabian gulf, sent certain Phoenicians in ships with orders to sail back through the pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea, and so to return to Egypt. The Phoenicians accordingly, setting out from the Red Sea, navigated the Southern Sea; when autumn came they went ashore, and sowed the land, by whatever part of Libya they happened to be sailing, and waited for harvest; then, having reaped the corn, they put to sea again. When two years had thus passed, in the third, having doubled the pillars of Hercules, they arrived in Egypt, and related what to me does not seem credible, but may to others, that as they sailed round Libya, they had the sun on the right hand.” Again, Pliny tells us (Book ii. chap. lxvii, Translation by Bostock and Riley), “While the power of Carthage was at its height, Hanno published an account of a voyage which he made from Gades to the extremity of Arabia: besides, we learn from Cornelius Nepos, that one Eudoxus, a contemporary of his, when he was flying from King Lathyrus, set out from the Arabian Gulf, and was carried as far as Gades. And long before him, Coelius Antipater informs us, that he had seen a person who had sailed from Spain to Ethiopia for the purposes of trade. The same Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern circumnavigation, tells us that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L. Afranius in the consulship, but then proconsul in Gaul, had a present made to him by the King of the Suevi, of certain Indians, who, sailing from India for the purposes of commerce, had been driven by tempests into Germany.”

Ptolemy Lathyrus commenced his reign 117 B.C. and reigned for thirty-six years. Cornelius Nepos is supposed to have lived in the century previous to the Christian era, and Coelius Antipater to have been born in the middle of the second century B.C.

[116] Edrisi compiled, under the instruction of Roger, King of Sicily, Italy, Lombardy, and Calabria, an exhaustive geographical treatise comprising information derived from numerous preceding works, principally Arabic, and from the testimony of all the geographers of the day.

Vide the Translation into French by M. AmÉdÉe Jaubert, 2 vols. 4to, Paris, 1836, included in the Recueil de Voyages et de MÉmoires publiÉ par la SociÉtÉ de GÉographie.

“Ce pays touch celui de Wac Wac oÙ sont deux villes misÉrables et mal peuplÉes À cause de la raretÉ des subsistances et du peu de ressource en tout genre; l’une se nomme Derou et l’autre Nebhena; dans son voisinage est un grand bourg nommÉ Da’rgha. Les naturels sont noirs, de figure hideuse, de complexion difformÉ; leur langage est une espÈce de sifflement. Ils sont absolument nus et sont peu visitÉs (par les Étrangers). Ils vivent de poissons, de coquillages, et de tortues. Ils sont (comme il vient d’Être dit) voisins de l’ile de Wac Wac dont nous reparlerons, s’il plait À Dieu. Chacun de ces pays et de ces iles est situÉ sur un grand golfe, on n’y trouve ni or, ni commerce, ni navire, ni bÊtes de somme.”—El Edrisi, vol. i. p. 79.

[117] The Agave Americane, which substance has as many uses among the Mexicans as the bamboo (the iron of China) among the Chinese, or the camel among nomads.

[118] The Thousand and One Nights, vol. iii. chap. xxv. p. 480, Note 32, E. W. Lane, London, 1877.

A similar account is given by Quazvini. See Scriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicis, J. Gildemeister, Bonn, 1838.

[119] The diggings are seventy to one hundred and fifty miles from Port Darwin. There is gold on Victoria River.

Jacks, in his report to the Queensland Government, published March or April of 1880, reports no paying gold in Yorke’s peninsula.

One hundred miles from Port Darwin and twenty-six miles from the Adelaide River a new rush occurred in July 1880: nuggets from 70 to 80 oz. of common occurrence; one found weighed 187 oz.

[120] Scientific American, Aug. 14, 1880.

[121] E. J. Elliott, “The Age of Cave Dwellers in America,” Pop. Sci. Monthly, vol. xv. p. 488.

[122] Scientific American, Jan. 24, 1880.

[123] Macmillan’s Magazine, quoted in Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 82.

[124] Œuvres, I. 7, pp. 197, 198.

[125] Two Voyages to New England, p. 124; London, 1673.

[126] Robert Knox, The Races of Men; London, 1850.

[127] Principles of Geology, chap. xii.[128] Atlantis, by Ignatius Donelly; New York, 1882.

[129] It is given in great detail by Mr. Donelly; want of space forbids my including it.

[130] I use the text of the edition of Diodorus Siculus of L. Rhodomanus, Amsterdam, 1746.

[131] “Professor Virchow considers this an example how certain artistical or technical forms are developed simultaneously, without any connection or relation between the artists or craftsmen.”—Preface to Ilios, Schliemann. Murray, 1880.

[132] Knivet’s description of the West Indies, Harris’ Voyages, vol. i. p. 705.

[133] T. Wright, Marco Polo, p. 267. Bohn, 1854.

[134] Harris’ Voyages, vol. i. p. 859.

[135] Dr. J. le Conte describes a ceremonial of cremation among the Cocopa Indians of California, and it is an ancient practice among the Chinese, dating back beyond the Greek and Roman historical periods.

[136] British Association, 1871.

[137] Staunton, China, vol. ii. p. 455.

[138] Humboldt, Researches in America, English Translation, vol. i. p. 133.

[139] “In turning to the consideration of the primitive works of art of the American continent ... when in the bronze work of the later iron period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon shapes and patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from the far eastern land of their birth.”—D. Wilson, Prehistoric Man, 1862.

“He had remarked that the Indians of the north-west coast frequently repeat in their well-known blackstone carvings the dragon, the lotus flower, and the alligator.”—C. G. Leland, Fusang, London, 1875.

[140] “Dragon, an imaginary animal something like a crocodile.”—Rev. Dr. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, p. 243.

[141] “In the woods of Java are certain flying snakes, or rather drakes; they have four legs, a long tail, and their skin speckled with many spots, their wings are not unlike those of a bat, which they move in flying, but otherwise keep them almost unperceived close to the body. They fly nimbly, but cannot hold it long, so that they fly from tree to tree at about twenty or thirty paces’ distance. On the outside of the throat are two bladders, which, being extended when they fly, serve them instead of a sail. They feed upon flies and other insects.”—Mr. John Nieuhoff’s Voyage and Travels to the East Indies, contained in a collection of Voyages and Travels, in 6 vols., vol. ii. p. 317; Churchill, London, 1732.

[142] Chambers’ EncyclopÆdia, vol. iii. p. 635.

[143] The following is the nearest approach to such an assertion I have met with, but appears from the context to apply to geologic time prior to the advent of man. “When all those large and monstrous amphibia since regarded as fabulous still in reality existed, when the confines of the water and the land teemed with gigantic saurians, with lizards of dimensions much exceeding those of the largest crocodiles of the present day: who to the scaly bodies of fish, added the claws of beasts, and the neck and wings of birds: who to the faculty of swimming in water, added not only that of moving on the earth but that of sailing in air: and who had all the characteristics of what we now call chimeras and dragons, and perhaps of such monsters the remains, found among the bones and skeletons of other animals more resembling those that still exist and propagate, in the grottos and caverns in which they sought shelter during the deluges that affected the infancy of the globe, gave first rise to the idea that these dens and caves were once retreats whence such monsters watched and in which they devoured other animals.”—Thomas Hope, On the Origin and Prospects of Man, vol. ii. p. 346; London, 1831.

Southey, in his Commonplace Book, pityingly alludes to this passage, saying, “He believes in dragons and griffins as having heretofore existed.”

[144] From the context, Lanuvium appears to have been on the Appian Road, in Latium, about twenty-fives miles from Rome.

[145] Propertius, Elegy VIII.; Bohn, 1854.

[146] History of Animals, Book ix., chap. ii. § 3; Bohn.

[147] Ibid., Book vi., chap. xx. § 12.

[148] Ibid., Book i., § 6.

[149] History of Animals, Book ix., chap. vii. § 4.

[150] Natural History of Pliny, Book viii., chap. xli., translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley; London, 1855.

[151] Anim. Nat., Book vi., chap. iv.

[152] Natural History, Book viii., chap. xxii.

[153] “On the contrary, towards ourselves they were disappointingly undemonstrative, and only evinced their consciousness of the presence of strangers by entwining themselves about the members of the family as if soliciting their protection.... They were very jealous of each other, Mr. Mann said; jealous also of other company, as if unwilling to lose their share of attention.... Two sweet little children were equally familiar with the other boas, that seemed quite to know who were their friends and playfellows, for the children handled them and petted them and talked to them as we talk to pet birds and cats.”—Account of Snakes kept by Mr. and Mrs. Mann, of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in Snakes, by C. C. Hopley; London, 1882.

[154] Natural History, Book xxix., chap. xx.

[155] “It is probable that the island of Zanig described by Qazvinius, in his geographical work (for extracts from which vide Scriptorum Arabum de Rebus Indicis loci et opuscula inedita, by I. Gildemeister, BonnÆ, 1838), as the seat of the empire of the Mahraj, is identical with Zaledj. He says that it is a large island on the confines of China towards India, and that among other remarkable features is a mountain called Nacan (Kini Balu?), on which are serpents of such magnitude as to be able to swallow oxen, buffaloes, and even elephants. Masudi includes Zanig, Kalah, and Taprobana among the islands constituting the territory of the Mahraj.”—P. AmÉdÉe Jaubert, GÉographie d’Edrisi, vol. i. p. 104; Paris, 1836.

[156] Book vi., chap. iv. § 16.[157] Serpent Worship, p. 35; Welder, New York, 1877.

[158] Pliny’s Natural History, Book viii., chap. xi., translated by J. Bostock and H. T. Riley; Bohn, London, 1855.

[159] Pliny’s Natural History, Book viii., chap. xii.

[160] Ibid., Book viii., chap. xiii.

[161] Ibid., Book viii., chap. xiv.

[162] “At the present day the longest Italian serpents are the Æsculapian serpent (a harmless animal) and the Colubes quadrilineatus, neither of which exceeds ten feet in length.”—Nat. Hist., Book viii., chap. xiv.

[163] Aristotle’s History of Animals, Book viii., chap. xxvii. § 6, by R. Cresswell, Bohn’s Series; Bell, London, 1878.

[164] An abridgment of these travels is contained in Voyages par Pierre Bergeron, À la Haye, 1735. They were originally written in Hebrew, translated into Latin by Benoit Arian Montare, and subsequently into French. [The introduction refers to his return to Castille in 1173, presumably after the termination of his voyages; but in the opening paragraph there is a marginal note giving the same date to his setting out from Sarragossa.] Sir John Mandeville gives a similar account in speaking of the tower of Babylon; he says, “but it is full long sithe that any man durste neyhe to the Tour: for it is all deserte and fulle of Dragouns and grete serpents, and fulle of dyverse venemous Bestes alle about he.”—The Voyages of Sir John Mandeville, Kt., p. 40; J. O. Halliwell, London, 1839.

[165] Harris’s Voyages, vol. i. p. 360.

[166] Ibid., vol. i. p. 392.

[167] EncyclopÆdia of Arts and Sciences, first American edition, Philadelphia, 1798.

[168] See Voyage to the East Indies, by Francis Leguat; London, 1708. Leguat hardly makes the positive affirmation stated in the text. In describing Batavia he says there is another sort of serpents which are at least fifty feet long.

[169] Broderip, Leaves from the Note Book of a Naturalist, p. 357.

[170] Australasia, p. 273.

[171] Quedah; London, 1857.

[172] Perak and the Malays, p. 77.

[173] Figuier, Reptiles and Birds, p. 51.

[174] La Chine IllustrÉ, d’Athase Keichere, chap. x. p. 272. Amsterdam, CI? IC? LXX.

[175] Vol. i. p. 601.

[176] See Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania, September 13, 1880. Mr. C. M. Officer states—“With reference to the Mindi or Mallee snake, it has often been described to me as a formidable creature of at least thirty feet in length, which confined itself to the Mallee scrub. No one, however, has ever seen one, for the simple reason that to see it is to die, so fierce it is, and so great its power of destruction. Like the Bunyip, I believe the Mindi to be a myth, a mere tradition.”

[177] Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. xiv. p. 247.

[178] Ibid., vol. xiv. p. 514.

[179] It is interesting to compare this belief with stories given elsewhere, by Pliny, Book viii. chap. xiv., and Ælian, Book ii. chap. xxi., of the power of the serpents or dragons of the river Rhyndacus to attract birds by inhalation.

[180] Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. xiv. p. 713.

[181] Herodotus, Book iii. chap. cvii., cviii.

[182] Herodotus, Book iii. chap. cviii.

[183] Herodotus, Book ii., chap. lxxv.

[184] Ibid., Book ii., chap. lxxvi.

[185] Ibid., Book i., chap. v.

[186] Antiquities of the Jews, Book ii., chap. x.

[187] Book viii. chap. xxxv.

[188] Pharsalia, Book ix.

[189] Herodotus, Book iv. chap. cv.

[190] Book iii. chap. xx.

[191] “It may be some comfort to graziers and selectors who are struggling, under many discouragements, to suppress the rabbit plague in Victoria, to learn that our condition, bad as it is, is certainly less serious than that of New Zealand. There, not only is an immense area of good country being abandoned in consequence of the inability of lessees to bear the great expense of clearing the land of rabbits, but, owing to the increase of the pest, the number of sheep depastured is decreasing at a serious rate. Three years ago the number exceeded thirteen millions; but it is estimated that they have since been diminished by two millions, while the exports of the colony have, in consequence, fallen off to the extent of £500,000 per annum. A Rabbit Nuisance Act has been in existence for some time, but it is obviously inefficient, and it is now proposed to make its provisions more stringent, and applicable alike to the Government as well as to private landowners. A select committee of both Houses of the Legislature, which has recently taken a large amount of evidence upon this subject, reports in the most emphatic terms its conviction that unless immediate and energetic action is taken to arrest the further extension of, and to suppress the plague, the result will be ruinous to the colony. A perusal of the evidence adduced decidedly supports this opinion. Many of the squatters cannot be accused of apathy. Some of them have employed scores of men, and spent thousands of pounds a year in ineffectual efforts to eradicate the rabbits from their runs. One firm last year is believed to have killed no less than 500,000; but the following spring their run was in as bad a state as if they had never put any poison down. Similar instances of failure could be easily multiplied. It is found, as with us, that one of the chief causes of non-success is the fact that the Government do not take sufficient steps to destroy the rabbits on unoccupied Crown lands. This foolish policy, of course, at once diminishes the letting value of the adjacent pastoral country—to such an extent, indeed, that instances have occurred in which 34,000 acres have been leased for £10 a year. Poison is regarded as the most destructive agent that can be employed, and it is especially effective when mixed with oats and wheat, a striking testimony to the value of Captain Raymond’s discovery. Most of the witnesses examined were strongly of opinion that the Administration of the Rabbit Suppression Act should not be left to private and, perhaps, interested persons, as at present, but should be conducted by officers of the Government, probably the sheep inspectors, on a principle similar to that by which the scab was eradicated from the flocks of the colony. The joint committee adopted this view, and also recommended the Legislature to enact that all unoccupied Crown land, as well as all native, reserved, or private land, should bear a proportionate share of the cost of destroying the rabbits, and of administering the act. It is to be hoped that, in the midst of the party conflicts which have so impeded practical legislation this session, the Parliament will yet find time to give effect to the useful recommendations of the Rabbit Nuisance Committee.”—Australasian, 10th September 1881.

[192] Book xv. chap. i. § 37.

[193] See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, p. 145-47. Murray, 1863.

[194] Æneid, Book vii. 561.

[195]

Non Arabum volucer serpens, innataque rubris
Æquoribus custos pretiosÆ vipera conchÆ
Aut viventis adhuc Lybici membrana cerastÆ.—
Pharsalia, Book vi. 677.

[196] The popular illustrations of the Story of the Black and White Snakes given by him, a favourite story among the Chinese, always represent them as winged. Folk Lore of China, N. P. Dennys, Ph.D.

[197] Broderip, Zoological Recreations, p. 333.

[198] Compare Shakspeare, “Peace, Kent. Come not between the Dragon and his wrath.”

[199] Metamorphoses, Book iii. 35, translated by H. J. Riley; London, 1872.

[200] In reference to colours so bright as to be inconsistent with our knowledge of the ordinary colours of reptiles, it may be of interest to compare the description by D’Argensola—who wrote the history of the successive conquests of the Moluccas, by the Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch—of a blue and golden saurian existing upon a volcanic mountain in Tarnate. “Il y a aussi sur cette montagne un grand lac d’eau douce, entourÉ d’arbres, dans lequel on voit de crocodiles azurÉs et dorÉs qui ont plus d’un brasse de longueur, et qui se plongent dans l’eau lors qu’ils entendent des hommes.”—D’Argensola, vol. iii. p. 4, translated from the Spanish, 3 vols.; J. Desbordes, Amsterdam, 1706. And Pliny, Nat. Hist., Book viii. chap. xxviii., speaks of lizards upon Nysa, a mountain of India, twenty-four feet long, their colour being either yellow, purple, or azure blue.

[201] Ovid, Fasti, Book iv. 501.

[202] These wood-cuts occur on pp. 239, 240.

[203] Broderip, Zoological Recreations, p. 332.

[204] Lucan, Pharsalia, Book ix. 726-32.

[205] Book xvi. chap. x.

[206] Book xv. chap. v.; A.D. 355.

[207] Lord Lytton, King Arthur, Book i. Stanza 4.

[208] Chamber’s CyclopÆdia, 1881.

[209] J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 653.

[210] A dragon without wings is called a lintworm or lindworm, which Grimm explains to mean a beautiful or shining worm (here again we have a corroboration of the idea of the gold and silver dragon given ante.)

[211] Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

[212] Rev. Dr. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, London.

[213] The Harleian Collection of Travels, vol. ii. p. 457. 1745.

[214] The italics are mine.

[215] Churchill, Collection of Voyages, vol. v. p. 213; London, 1746.

[216] Ulyssis Aldrovandi Serpentum et Draconum HistoriÆ; BononiÆ, 1640.

[217] Scaliger, lib. iii. Miscell. cap. i. See ante, p. 182, “Winged Serpents.”

[218] De Natur Rerum, lib. vii., cap. 29.

[219] Athanasii Kircheri Mundus Subterraneus, Book viii. 27.

[220] Probably many of my readers are acquainted with Schiller’s poem based on this story, and with the beautiful designs by Retsch illustrating it.

[221] Harris, Collection of Voyages, vol. i. p. 474; London, 1764.

[222] De Moribus Brachmanorum, p. 63. Strabo, lib. 16, p. 75. Bochart Hieroz, p. 11, lib. 3, cap. 13.

[223] Ælian, De Animal., lib. xv. cap. 21.

[224] Strabo, lib. xvi.

[225] Gosse tells us that it is still a common belief in Jamaica that crested snakes exist there which crow like a cock.

[226] Strabo, lib. xvi.

[227] Jonston, Theatr. Animal., tome ii. p. 34, “De Serpentibus.” Note.—It is interesting to record that in China, to the present day, the tradition of the gold and silver scaled species of dragons remains alive. Two magnificent dragons, 200 feet and 150 feet long, representing respectively the gold and silver dragon, formed part of the processions in Hongkong in December 1881, in honour of the young princes.

[228] Strabo, lib. xvi.

[229] In China the dragon is peculiarly the emblem of imperial power, as with us the lion is of the kingly. The Emperor is said to be seated on the dragon throne. A five-clawed dragon is embroidered on the Emperor’s court-robes. It often surrounds his edicts, and the title-pages of books published by his authority, and dragons are inscribed on his banners. It is drawn stretched out at full length or curled up with two legs pointing forwards and two backwards; sometimes holding a pearl in one hand, and surrounded by clouds and fire.

[230] The Yih King—extracts from papers by Monsieur De la Couperie, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.

“The Yih King is the oldest of the Chinese books, and is the mysterious classic which requires ‘a prolonged attention to make it reveal its secrets’; it has peculiarities of style, making it the most difficult of all the Chinese classics to present in an intelligible version.”

“We have multifarious proofs that the writing, first known in China, was already an old one, partially decayed, but also much improved since its primitive hieroglyphic stage. We have convincing proofs (vide my ‘Early History of Chinese Civilization,’ pp. 21-23, and the last section of the present paper) that it had been borrowed, by the early leaders of the Chinese Bak families [Poh Sing] in Western Asia, from an horizontal writing traced from left to right, the pre-cuneiform character, which previously had itself undergone several important modifications.

“At that time the Ku-wen was really the phonetic expression of speech. (By an analysis of the old inscriptions and fragments, and by the help of the native works on palÆography, some most valuable, I have compiled a dictionary of this period.)

“If the kwas, which were a survival of the arrows of divination known to the ancestors of Chinese culture before their emigration eastward,” &c. &c.—Vol. xiv. part 4.

“This mysterious book is still avowedly not understood, and we assist, now-a-days, at a most curious spectacle. There are not a few Chinese of education among those who have picked up some knowledge in Europe or in translations of European works of our modern sciences, who believe openly that all these may be found in their Yih. Electricity, steam power, astronomical laws, sphericity of the earth, &c., are all, according to their views, to be found in the Yih King; they firmly believe that these discoveries were not ignored by their sages, who have embodied them in their mysterious classics, of which they will be able to unveil the secrets when they themselves apply to its study a thorough knowledge of the modern sciences. It is unnecessary for any European mind to insist upon the childishness of such an opinion. Even in admitting, what seems probable, that the early leaders of the Bak people (Poh Sing) were not without some astronomical and mathematical principles, which have been long since forgotten, there is no possible comparison between their rude notions and our sciences.

“It is not a mysterious book of fate and prognostics. It contains a valuable collection of documents of old antiquity, in which is embodied much information on the ethnography, customs, language, and writing of early China.

“Proofs of various kinds—similitude of institutions, traditions and knowledge, affinities of words of culture; and, in what concerns the writing, likenesses of shapes of characters, hieroglyphic and arbitrary, with the same sounds (sometimes polyphons) and meanings attached to them, the same morphology of written words, the same phonetic laws of orthography—had led me, several years ago, to no other conclusion than that (as the reverse is proved impossible by numerous reasons), at an early period of their history, and before their emigration to the far East, the Chinese Bak families had borrowed the pre-cuneiform writing and elements of their knowledge and institutions from a region connected with the old focus of culture of south-western Asia.

“Numerous affinities of traditions, institutions, and customs, connect the borrowing of script and culture by the Chinese Bak families with the region of Elam, the confederation of states of which Susa was the chief town, and the Kussi the principal population.

“What are the historical facts of this connection we do not know. Has the break-up which happened in those states and resulted in the conquest of Babylonia by the Elamite king, Kudur Nakhunta, at the date, which is certain, of 2285 B.C., been also the cause of an eastern conquest and a settlement in Bactria? and would this account for the old focus of culture coeval with the earlier period of Assyrian monarchy said to have existed in Central Asia?

“The two ethnic names, which, as we have pointed out, were those of the Chinese invaders, Bak and Kutti or Kutta, are not altogether foreign to those regions. The Chinese Kutti and the Kussi, the Chinese Bak and Bakh, the ethnic of Bakhdi (Bactria), will be, most likely, one day proved to be the same ethnic names. Had not the Chinese, previous to my researches, and quite on different reasons, been traced back westerly to the regions of Yarkand and Khotan? This is not far distant from the old focus of culture of Central Asia, and the connection cannot be objected to by geographical reasons.”—Vol. xv. part 2.

[231] Dr. Williams, Hien-ning.

[232] Williams, Shi-WÉi.

[233] Williams, Liu-LÉi.

[234] Williams, Shu King.

[235] Williams, Yih and Ts‘ih.

[236] I am under the impression that the dragons to which Mencius refers were probably alligators, of which one small species still exists, though rare, in the Yang-tsze-kiang. So also we may regard as alligators the dragons referred to above in the annals of the Bamboo Books on the passage of the Kiang by Yu. Mr. Griffis, in his work on Corea, says, “The creature called a-ke, or alligator, capable of devouring a man, is sometimes found in the largest rivers.”

[237] For a full account of this work, see an Article by E. C. Bridgman in Chinese Repository, xviii. (1849), p. 169; and Botanicon Sinicum, by Dr. E. Bretschneider, in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, vol. xvi. 1881.

[238] Notes on Chinese Literature, A. Wylie, Shanghai and London, 1867.

[239] “Bot. Sin.” in Journal of N. China Branch R. A. S., 1881.

[240] Journal Asiatique, Extr. No. 17 (1839).

[241] The three prefaces by these authors are given in extenso in the Appendix to this Chapter.

[242] The reader is referred, for a careful prÉcis of the contents of this valuable work, to an exhaustive paper entitled “Botanicon Sinicum,” in the Journal of North China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, 1881, by E. Bretschneider, M.D.

[243] The character for a hare is very like the character for a devil. The Japanese, in quoting this passage, have fallen into this error.

[244] The dragons’ bones sold by apothecaries in China consist of the fossilized teeth and bones of a variety of species, generally in a fragmentary condition. The white earth striÆ, or dragons’ brains, here referred to, are probably asbestos. The asbestos sold in Chefoo market, under the name of Lung Ku or dragons’ bones, is procured at O-tzu-kung.

[245] The boletus, supposed to possess mystic efficacy.

[246] The first two stories are from the Ko Ku Shi Riyah, a recent history of Japan, from the earliest periods down to the present time, by Matsunai, with a continuation by a later author. They are contained in the first chapter of the first volume. The third is given as an ordinary item of news in the journal called the Chin-jei-Nippo, April 30th, 1884.

[247] The idea of the eight heads probably originated in China; thus, in the caves in Shantung, near Chi-ning Chou, among carvings of mythological figures and divinities, dating from A.D. 147, we find a tiger’s body with eight heads, all human.

[248] Mourakoumo means “clouds of clouds”; ama means “heaven”; tsurogi means “sword.”

[249] White snakes are occasionally, although rarely, seen in Japan. They are supposed to be messengers from the gods, and are never killed by the people, but always taken and carried to some temple. The white snake is worshipped in Nagasaki at a temple called Miyo-ken, at Nishi-yama, which is the northern part of the city of Nagasaki.

[250] MÉmoires sur les ContrÉes occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois en l’an 648; et du Chinois en Francais, par M. Stanislas Julien. 2 vols., Paris, 1857.

[251] Foe Koue Ki, ou Relation des Royaumes Bouddhiques, par Che Fa Hien. Translated from the Chinese by M. Abel Remusat; Paris, 1836. This volume contains a number of very interesting dragon legends, and quaint conceits about them; but I find nothing in it to supplement my materialistic argument.

[252] Montaigne, Essays, chap. xxvi.

[253] “I fully believe in this great marine monster. I have as much evidence as to its existence as of anything not seen. Some years ago, Captain Austin Cooper and the officers and crew of the Carlisle Castle, on a voyage to Melbourne, saw the ‘varmint.’ A description and sketch of it were published in the Argus. This, when it arrived in London, it being the ‘silly season’ in journalism, was seized and torn to pieces by one of the young lions of the Daily Telegraph, in a leading article, in which much fun was poked at the gallant sailor. ‘I don’t see any more sea-serpents,’ said my Irish friend to me. ‘It is too much to be told that one of Green’s commanders can’t tell the difference between a piece of sea-weed and a live body in the water. If twenty serpents come on the starboard, all hands shall be ordered to look to port. No London penny-a-liner shall say again that Austin Cooper is a liar and a fool.’ After this we softened down over some Coleraine whiskey. Again, some three years ago, the monster was plainly seen off the great reef of New Caledonia by Commandant Villeneuve, and the officers of the French man-of-war, the Seudre. Chassepots were procured to shoot it, but before it came within easy range it disappeared. During my late visit to Fiji, Major James Harding, who was an officer in Cakoban’s army when that chief, ‘by the grace of God’ was king of Fiji, described exactly the same creature as passing within a few yards of his canoe on a clear moonlight night in the Bay of Suva. It swam towards a small island outside the reef, which is known amongst Fijians as the ‘Cave of the Big Snake.’ Major Harding is a cool, brave soldier, who saw much hot work with Cakoban’s men against the hill tribes of Vonua Levu. He was once riddled by bullets, and left for dead. Accustomed for years to travel about the reefs in canoes, every phase of the aspect of the waters was known to him, and he was not likely to be frightened with false fire. The extraordinary thing is, that the English sailor, the French commander, and the Fijian soldier, all gave the same account of this monster. It is something with a head slightly raised out of the water, and with a sort of mane streaming behind it, whilst the back of a long body is seen underneath the water. So, from these instances, in which I know the witnesses, I fully believe in the sea-serpent. What is there very wonderful in it, after all? The whale is the largest living thing. Why shouldn’t the waters produce snakes of gigantic size.” The Vagabond, in Supplement to the Australasian, September 10, 1881.

[254] Contained in Eden’s Travels.

[255] Connected with the breathing apparatus?

[256] Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, vol. i. p. 376.

[257] A. de Brooke, Travels to the North Cape.

[258] 1 ell = 2 feet.

[259] Transactions of the Wernerian Society, vol. i. p. 442.

[260] No. 92, May 1873; London, Van Voorst.

[261] Shetland Islands, p. 565.

[262] Jardine’s Naturalist’s Library, vol. xxv.

[263] How this reminds one of the Chinese dragon.

[264] Within a few days of writing these lines I made one of a party of four to visit the waterfalls of Taki-kwannon, near Nagasaki. I asked for estimates of the height of the fall, which was variously guessed, by different members of the party, at from forty-three to one hundred and fifty feet.

[265] Folklore of China, p. 113.

[266] Vide Verhandelingen van Het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Weten Schappen, Deel xxxix., 1ere Stuk., Batavia, 1877.

[267] About 1? lb. avoirdupois.

[268] Contributions to Materia Medica and Natural History of China, by F. P. Smith, M.B., London; Shanghai and London, 1871.

I give, in the appendix to this chapter, some accounts of a reputed monster, the Shan, the description of which by Chinese authors, although vague, appears to me to point to the sea-serpent. I only insert a portion of the latter part of the legends regarding it which I find in my authority, as they are perfectly valueless. The sample given may, however, be interesting as an example of how the Taouists compiled their absurd miraculous stories.

[269] For sea-serpent read octopus.

[270] I must also add, on the information of Mr. H. C. Syers, of Selangor, that Captain Douglas, late Resident of Perak, had a large sea-serpent rise close to him, somewhere off Perak, when in a boat manned by Malays. Mr. Syers had the account both from Captain Douglas and from the crew; and he tells me that there is a universal belief in the existence of some large sea-monster among the Malays of the western coast of the Peninsula.

[271] This is one of the fleet of the important Japanese Mitsu Bish Company, the equivalent of the P. and O. Company in Japan.

[272] Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 56, December 1876, p. 234.

[273] It must be remembered that it is with a blow of its powerful tail that the alligator stuns its prey and knocks it into the water (when any stray animal approaches the bank), and it is with the tail that the dragon, in the fable related by Ælian, chastises, although gently, its mistress, and constricts, according to Pliny, the elephant in its folds.

[274] Nineteenth Century, March 1877, p. 20. Article on “Authority in Matters of Opinion,” by G. Cornewall Lewis. Reviewed by W. E. Gladstone.

[275] From the Daheim, No. 17, Supplement. January 27th, 1883. Leipzig.

[276] 41° Fahrenheit.

[277] A Collection of Voyages, in 4 volumes. J. J. Knapton, London, 1729.

[278] A Voyage to the East Indies, by Francis Leguat. London, 1708.

[279] I find the following note in Maclean’s Guide to Bombay, for 1883: “Since the first edition of this Gazette was published, Captain Dundas, of the P. and O. Company’s steamer Cathay, has informed me that the statements of old travellers regarding these serpents are quite accurate. The serpents are not seen excepting during the south-west monsoon the season in which alone voyages used to be made to India. In Horsburgh’s Sailing Directions, shipmasters are warned to look out for the serpents, whose presence is a sign that the ship is close to land. Captain Dundas says that the serpents are yellow or copper-coloured. The largest ones are farthest out to sea. They lie on the surface of the water, and appear too lazy even to get out of a steamer’s way.”

[280] The Romance of Natural History, P. H. Gosse, F.R.S., First Series, London, 1880, 12th edition; Second Series, 1875, 5th edition.

[281] “At length, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were thrown open for examination by the desire which then existed in Germany to possess the ebur fossile, or ‘unicorn’s horn,’ a supposed infallible specific for the cure of many diseases. The unicorn horn was to be found in the caves, and the search for it revealed the remains of lions, hyÆnas, elephants, and many other tropical and strange animals.” Pop. Sci. Monthly, No. 32.

[282] Book iv. ch. cxci. and cxcii.

[283] Book ii. ch. ii. § 8.

[284] Book viii. ch. xxxii.

[285] Book xi. ch. cvi.

[286] Ibid.

[287] Ælian, De Natur Animalium, Book xvi. ch. xx.

[288] De Bello Gallico, ch. ii. p. 26.

[289] Vide Charton’s Voyageurs du Moyen Ages, vol. ii. p. 25.

[290] Harris’ Voyages, vol. i. p. 362; “Africa,” by John Leo.

[291] Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. i. p. 392; “Ethiopia,” by Jobus Ludolphus.

[292] The Navigation and Voyage of Lewes Vertomannus, of Rome, into Arabia, Egypt, &c., in 1503, contained in “The History of Travayle in the East and West Indies,” done into English by Richard Eden. London, 1577.

[293] Berynto, a city on the seacoast of Syria, Phoenicia.

[294] Sining is on the western frontier of Kansuh, towards Kokonor.

[295] Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. xv. p. 23.

[296] Pinkerton’s Voyages, vol. vii. p. 333.

[297] Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China. Huc and Gabet. Translated by W. Hazlitt, vol. ii. p. 245.

[298] Gosse, Romance of Natural History.

[299] Prejevalski’s Mongolia, vol. ii. p. 207; London, 1876.

[300] See ’Rh Ya and Yuen Keen Luy Han, vol. ccccxxix. p. 1.

[301] This height will have to be reduced in accordance with the difference between the magnitude of old and new standards of measurement.

[302] A poet, native of Hang Cheu.

[303] Vide the translation into French by L. Serrurier, Leyden, 1875.

[304] “The Chinese have a tradition that this animal skips, and is so holy or harmless that it won’t even tread upon an insect, and that it is to come in the shape of an incomparable man, a revealer of mysteries, supernatural and divine, and a great lover of all mankind, who is expected to come, about the time of a particular constellation in the heavens, on a special mission for their benefit. The Japanese unicorn answers the description of the animal bearing that name, and supposed to be still extant in Ethiopia, and which is equal to the size of a small horse, reddish in colour, and slender as a gazelle, the male having one horn. The unicorn is the ancient crest of the kings of Israel, and is still retained by the Mikado.” Epitome of the Ancient History of Japan, p. 116; N. McLeod, Nagasaki, 1875.

[305] Vol. ccccxxx. p. 18.

[306] Vol. ccccxxxii. p. 38.

[307] This will have to be reduced by nearly one-half, to equate it with the present measures of length.

[308] San Li T’u, vol. viii. p. 3. The San Li T’u is an illustrated, modern, edition by Nieh Tsung I. of the old San Li; it was written during the reign of the great patron of literature, Kang Hi (A.D. 1661 to 1723).

[309] Vol. vii. No. 1, p. 72.

[310] Harris, Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa. The Oryx Capensis—The Gemsbock.

“The figure of the renowned unicorn can be traced in all the ancient ear-rings, coins, and Latin heraldic insignia, to some one of the members of the oryxine family; of all the whimsies of antiquity, whether emanating from the unbridled and fertile fancies of the people of Egypt and Persia, or devised by the more chaste and classic taste which distinguished Greece and Rome, the unicorn—unquestionably the most celebrated—is the chimera which has in modern ages engrossed the largest portion of attention from the curious.

“The rhinoceros is supposed to be the animal so often alluded to in Scripture under the name of reem or unicorn, yet the combination presented in the oryx of the antelopine and equine characters, the horns and cloven hoof of the one, blended with the erect mane, general contour and long switch tail of the other, corresponds in all essential particulars with the extant delineations and descriptions of the heraldic unicorn, which is universally represented to have been possessed of a straight slender horn, ringed at the base, and to have the hoof divided; to have worn a mane reversed, a black flowing tail, and a turkey-like tuft on the larynx, whilst both the size and ground colour were said to be those of the ass, with the addition of sundry black markings, imparting to the face and forehead a piebald appearance.

“The alterations required to reduce the African oryx to the standard of this model, are slight and simple, nor can it be doubted that they have been gradually introduced by successive copyists; the idea of the single horn having been derived in the first instance from profile representations of that animal given in bas-relief on the sculptured monuments of ancient Egypt and Nubia.... They have in their aspect a certain bovine expression; and Arabs and other natives never consider them as antelopes but as a species of buffalo.... The oryx boldly defends itself when pressed by the hunters, is quarrelsome during the rutting season, and it is said that even the lion dreads an encounter with it.”

[311] Even the patient ass, in a state of nature, is endowed with great courage. Baharan, one of the early Persian monarchs, received the surname Baharan Guz from his transfixing, with one arrow, a wild ass and a lion engaged in active combat.

[312] Black, red, azure (green, blue, or black), white, yellow.

[313] Many species of bird do not attain their mature plumage until long after they have attained adult size, as some among the gulls and birds of prey. I think I am right in saying that some of these latter only become perfect in their third year. We all know the story of the ugly duckling, and the little promise which it gave of its future beauty.

[314] According to Dr. Williams, the Lwan was a fabulous bird described as the essence of divine influence, and regarded as the embodiment of every grace and beauty, and that the argus pheasant was the type of it.

Dr. Williams says that it was customary to hang little bells from the phoenix that marked the royal cars.

[315] In reference to Hwang Ti (?) writing the Bamboo Books?

[316] The Wu Tung is the Eleococca verrucosa, according to Dr. Williams; others identify it with the Sterculia platanifolia. There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that without having Wu Tung trees you cannot expect to see phoenixes in your garden.

[317] Berosus lived in the time of Alexander the Great, or about B.C. 330-260, or 300 years after the Jews were carried captive to Babylon.

[318] EncyclopÆdia Britannica.

[319] Jan-jan means a gradual but imperceptible advance.

[320] Defined by Williams “as the dragon of morasses and thickets, which has scales and no horn, corresponding very nearly to the fossil iguanodon.” Vide the description (ante) from the Pan-Tsaou-Kang-mu, &c.

[321] Ying—correct, true.

[322] According to Williams, this is a young dragon without a horn, although others, as in the text, say with one.

[323] P’an—to curl up, to coil.

[324] The male and female principle.

[325] See the notices in the body of the work from the Shan Hai King.[326] See the description of the dragon from the P’au-Tsaou-Kang-mu.

[327] Waters of such specific gravity that even a feather would sink.

[328] Probably a pair from each stream.

[329] In Foh-kien.

[330] Probably equivalent to “abbot.”

[331] Extract from the Yuen Keen Lei Han, vol. ccccxxxviii., p. 23.

[332] In drilling an army there are names for all positions of the army. Thus, the general says: “Arrange yourselves like a snake, or like a dragon, or any other imaginable shape.”

[333] Williams gives this translation only, but I think there must be another meaning; probably some sort of reptile is indicated.

Transcriber’s Note:

Foonote 128 appears on page 150 of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page.

Foonote 157 appears on page 168 of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page.

Foonote 326 appears on page 400 of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page.