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Ch. 10: Elephants Mammoth Mastodon

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EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 341
for it as being the remains of a fabulous creature denomi­nated thien-shu, or " the mouse that hides." This "mouse," however, is said to have been as large as an elephant, with bones as white as ivory, and cold, but pure and wholesome flesh; an allusion, it is believed, to the frozen remains of mammoths. The "claw of a griffin," said to have been given by the Khalif Haroun al Rashid to Charlemagne, was probably a horn of the woolly Siberian rhinoceros. This was, however, an isolated instance, although possibly some of the unicorn's horns listed in old inventories may have been of a similar kind, but the first certain notice we have of the importation of Siberian fossil ivory into Western Europe refers to some brought to London in 1611, by Josias Logan, who bought it from the Samoyedes of the Pechora district.*
Certain data regarding the reported discovery of giants' bones were published in the "Mémoires" of the French Academy of Sciences in 1727 by Sir Hans Sloane, whose collec-tionformed the foundation of the British Museum.f An early instance is given by Pliny,J who tells of an immense skeleton, 46 cubits high, which was found in a cavern of a Cretan mountain that had been rent asunder by an earthquake. An even more marvellous tale, told in late medieval times, recounted the finding in Rome of the skeleton of Pallas, which was higher than the city walls. A still stranger in­stance is given by Simon Majolus** who quotes from Ful-gosus, an earlier writer, that the bones of one of the olden giants were in England, in 1171, still lying in their proper order in the alluvium of a river; this skeleton measured
*R. Lydekker, "Mammoth Ivory," see Smithsonian Annual Report for 1899, pp. 361-S66, and Se. Amer. SuppL, 1228, July 11, 1899.
t"Mémoire sur les dents et autres ossements de l'éléphant trouves dans la terre"; in Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1727; Paris, 1729, pp. 305 sqq.
î" Naturalis Historia," Lib. VII, cap. 16.                      -
**Dierum concularium, colloq. 2, p. 36.
Ch. 10: Elephants Mammoth Mastodon Page of 681 Ch. 10: Elephants Mammoth Mastodon
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