Chapter XXXIII: Section II (1)

"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 Shăn_, and are not careful to prevent its escape.' But the _Shăn_ 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 _Shăn_. [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 _Shăn_ which often fought with the _Shăn_ 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 _Shăn_ snake was transformed into a Taouist, and then it said to him: 'I am endangered by the _Shăn_ 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 _Shăn_. The water immediately turned into blood, and the _Shăn_, after receiving the wound, tried to return to the lake of Lu, but died before it reached there."

_Kang Hi Dictionary._

"The _Shăn 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 _Shăn_."

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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 phœnix, 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 phœnix 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.

[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. μάχαιρα "a sword," and ὀδούς "a tooth."

[51] From μαστός "a teat," and ὀδούς "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.

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 Phœnicians in ships with orders to sail back through the pillars of Hercules into the Northern Sea, and so to return to Egypt. The Phœnicians 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, Cœlius 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 Cœlius 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.