There are certain subjects which come within my ken upon which paragraphs are published in the papers nearly every other day of a wildly romantic and misleading character. These subjects may be classified as: (1) Living and extinct monsters. (2) Cures for cancer and tubercle. (3) Unsuspected dangers of infection by disease-germs. It would hardly be pleasant for me to quote these paragraphs in order to deny their statements. They are often headed, “For the Little Ones,” or “From a Foreign Correspondent.” The old-established and better title for such announcements is “For the Marines.” I shall endeavour to mention as they occur to me, among other things, new and duly-certified facts relating to monsters, and to the investigation of disease. With reference to reports which have been seriously put forward during the past year, I may say that the alleged discovery of a mammoth in North America 71ft. long and 40ft. tall is nonsense. In the announcement to which I allude, the measurements have been altered from some original and more correct statement and made to appear astonishing by error or design.

No new facts of importance bearing upon the treatment of either cancer or tubercle have been lately discovered which can be explained to the general public. Work is proceeding nevertheless. No new source of danger from disease-germs has been detected since this time last year. It is true that the dust in railway carriages, and especially in sleeping-cars, which are not properly cleaned every day after occupation by travellers, is full of microbes, and, like the dust of rooms which have been crowded by human beings, may be a source of disease infection. The remedy for this is careful cleansing after each journey, and a special construction of the cars like a tiled bath-room, so as to avoid the accumulation of dirt. At present this is, and long has been, neglected.

Another serious and more recent danger is that arising from the crowding of passengers in underground railway tubes. Both in Paris and London this has been recognised as a real and pressing danger. Trouble has been given by the dust raised in the Paris Tube, but the danger caused by dust has been avoided in London. It is a definitely-ascertained fact that many bacteria, including disease-producing kinds, are rapidly killed by exposure to strong sunlight. Hence underground tubes and the chinks and recesses of railway carriages are more liable to harbour disease-germs than the open-air roadways and the carriages which ply on them. Great cleanliness and the use of germicide washing fluids are the obvious precautions to be taken in the absence of sunlight.

As to mammoths and elephants—the former is a misspelling of the word “mammont,” the name given by the natives of Northern Siberia to the extinct elephant, hairy, but otherwise closely similar to the Indian elephant, which within the period of prehistoric man (50,000 to 150,000 years) was abundant over the whole of the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere. Mammoths’ tusks (ivory) are still largely imported from Siberia. The biggest African elephant may, perhaps, stand 13ft. at the shoulder. No mammoth or other extinct elephant seems to have exceeded this. The stuffed African elephant in Cromwell road measures 11ft. 2in. at the shoulder. Mr. Carnegie’s great extinct reptile Diplodocus is only 12ft. 9in. from the ground at the highest part of its back. The biggest tusk of a recent elephant ever seen was bought by me for the Natural History Museum seven years ago. It weighs 228lb., and measures 10ft. 2in. along the curve. It was recognised three years ago by Mr. Jephson (one of Stanley’s companions) as one of a pair which he had weighed in Central Africa. It was in the possession of Emin Pasha when that unfortunate gentleman was “rescued” by Stanley and Jephson. After the subsequent assassination of Emin, his ivory treasure found its way to Zanzibar, and this tusk being part of it, was sold and brought to London.

A real new monster of great size is the carnivorous reptile described by Professor Osborne, of New York, as Tyrannosaurus. There is no mistake or exaggeration about this report. The specimen is in the New York Museum, and has been described in detail and drawn to scale by Professor Osborne. The skeleton stands up like that of a huge bird or a kangaroo on the two hind legs—as does that of the vegetarian reptile Iguanodon. The Iguanodon and the Tyrannosaurus are of about the same height, namely 17ft. But the new monster has enormous tiger-like teeth, twelve on each side of the jaw, above and below, and the jaws are three feet long, whilst the whole head is broad and short. Iguanodon, on the other hand, has been long known from English and Belgian rocks, and can be seen in Cromwell Road. It has a beak like a tortoise, and the small teeth of a vegetable-feeder. Both animals had very short front limbs or arms, but in Tyrannosaurus these are really ridiculously out of proportion, according to more familiar standards, for the whole arm is not bigger than one of the toes of the hind foot. This new giant carnivorous reptile is found in rocks of the same age as our greensand and chalk in Wyoming, U.S.A. It preyed upon huge vegetable-eating reptiles, the remains of which are found in the same strata, and have been reconstructed.

The mere size of these extinct reptiles is a very natural cause of wonder and admiration. At the same time, it is well to remember that the body of the largest African elephant is as big, or very nearly as big, as the body of the biggest of these extinct reptiles. Some of these giant extinct reptiles had very long tails and necks, which the elephant cannot boast. No extinct animal is known which approaches in bulk the great whales of various kinds at present inhabiting the sea. The striking thing about many huge extinct animals is that they are represented to-day by similarly constructed animals of much smaller size. Thus we know giant extinct sloths, which contrast strangely with the small living sloths of to-day, giant extinct rat-like animals and giant extinct kangaroos far exceeding the bulk of living rats and kangaroos. But it is distinctly not true that all recent animals are degenerate and small as compared with extinct related kinds. The modern horse is far larger than its extinct ancestors, which we can trace back in a gradual diminishing series to a little beast no bigger than a spaniel. So, too, the earliest elephants known are quite small creatures.

The interesting point about extinct animals is really not so much that they were often large of their kind, but that they are often of kinds quite unknown at the present day among living animals. On the other hand sometimes (but by no means always) they can be shown to be connected as ancestors to living animals by a series of intermediate forms. The remains of the connecting forms are found embedded in successive rock-strata, intermediate in age between the present day and the remote period when the earliest members of the series were alive and flourishing—and we can follow out in many instances (for example, in the pedigree of the horse, and again of the elephant) the gradual but very extensive changes by which the descendants of a long extinct kind of animal have been “transformed” into modern recent animals, familiar to us.