The tendency of English newspapers to bedeck themselves every now and again with rank absurdities copied from American rubbish-sheets is a disease. On no subject outside the field of natural history and medicine would any editor dream of printing the stuff which does duty as “news” in regard to these departments—stuff which has not even the semblance of being carefully concocted, but yet is found “good enough” to circulate as serious information.

Another antediluvian monster, much larger than the mammoth, was reported in a London evening paper at the end of November 1907. The article devoted to it is a mass of absurdity, a burlesque of a genuine note on the subject. It appears that the most ordinary thing happened at Los Angeles, California, namely, that some workmen, in driving a tunnel, unearthed some fossil bones. We are not surprised to learn (though it is announced as a marvel) that the bones were those of a mastodon (of which you may see a whole skeleton in Cromwell-road), and those of the extinct American elephant called Elephas columbi. This very commonplace occurrence was certainly not worth recording in a London daily paper. So it is elaborately dressed up with details intended to “fetch” the innocent reader. The writer says Elephas columbi is as much larger than the Siberian mammoth as that is larger than the horse of to-day. The truth is that Elephas columbi and the mammoth are as nearly as possible of the same size. To writer goes on to tell of a “fossil horse,” found at the same place, “a wonderful two-toed animal marked by his cloven hoof.” That is cool impudence; it is precisely “the double hoof” which none of the horse tribe possess, but all the deer, cattle, and sheep do. He next tells us that elephants and mastodons were never found together before, but supposed to have shunned each other’s company. This is an invention; their remains are found side by side all over Europe. Then suddenly the surprising statement is made, like a bolt from the blue, “England ceases to be the Mother Country and Germany the Fatherland to us,” and the pre-eminence of America in providing the biggest thing on earth is declared to have been already manifest “when the world rose out of chaos.” It is satisfactory to be told that England is not the Mother Country of this silliness; but whether the world which solemnly prints and reads it can be said to have yet “risen out of chaos” must be regarded as doubtful.