the ancients. A live one was shewn at Rome, in the circus, during
the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, in the year of Rome 708; and ten
of them were exhibited together by Gordian III. all of which were
killed at the secular games of Philip[36], a circumstance which
may well surprise the moderns, who have only witnessed a single
individual, which was sent by the Soldan of Egypt to Laurentius de
Medicis, in the fifteenth century, and is painted in the frescoes of
Poggio-Cajano.
If we read with attention the descriptions of the Hippopotamus,
given by Herodotus and Aristotle, and which are supposed to have
been borrowed from Hecatæus of Miletum, we shall find, that they
must have been made up from two different animals, one of which
was perhaps the true hippopotamus, and the other was assuredly the
Gnou[37], a quadruped, of which our naturalists begin to take notice
only about the end of the eighteenth century. It is the same animal
of which fabulous accounts were given by Pliny and Ælian, under the
name of _catoblepas_ and _catablepon_[38].
The Ethiopian Boar of Agatharchides, which is described as having
horns, is precisely the Ethiopian Boar of modern times, the enormous
tusks of which deserve the name of horns nearly as much as those of
the elephant[39].
The Bubalus and Nagor are described by Pliny[40]; the Gazelle by
Ælian[41]; the Oryx by Oppian[42]; the Axis, so early as the time of
Ctesias[43]; and the Algazel, and Corinne, are accurately figured
upon the Egyptian monuments[44].
Ælian has well described the _Bos grunniens_ or Yak, under the name
of the ox having a tail which serves for a fly-flapper[45].
The Buffalo was not domesticated by the ancients; but the Indian Ox,
of which Ælian speaks[46], and which had horns large enough to hold
three amphoræ, was assuredly that variety of the buffalo which is
now called the _arnee_. And even the wild ox with depressed horns,
which is mentioned by Aristotle as inhabiting Arachosia, a province
of ancient Persia, could be nothing else than the common buffalo[47].
The ancients were acquainted with the hornless variety of the ox[48],
and with the African oxen, whose horns, being only attached to the
skin, moved with it[49]. They also knew the Indian oxen, which
equalled the horse in speed[50]; and those which were so small as
not to exceed a he-goat in size[51]. Nor were the broad-tailed sheep
unknown to them[52],--nor those of India, which were said to be as
large as asses[53].
Although the accounts left us by the ancients, respecting the
Aurochs, the Rein-deer, and Elk, are all mingled with fable, they
are yet sufficient to prove that these animals were in some degree
known to them, but that the reports which had reached them, had been
communicated by ignorant people, and had not been corrected by a
judicious examination[54]. These animals still inhabit the countries
which the ancients assigned to them; and have only disappeared in
such of them as have been too much cultivated for their habits. The
aurochs[55] and elk still exist in the forests of Lithuania, which
were formerly continuous with the great Hercynian Forest. The former
of these animals still occurs in the northern parts of Greece, as
it did in the days of Pausanias. The rein-deer inhabits the snowy
regions of the north, where it always had its abode; it changes
its colour, not at pleasure, but according to the change of the
seasons. It was in consequence of mistakes scarcely excusable, that
it was imagined to have occurred in the Pyrenees in the fourteenth
century[56].
Even the White Bear had been seen in Egypt while under the
Ptolemies[57].
Lions and Panthers were common at Rome, where they were presented
by hundreds in the games of the Circus. Even several Tigers were
exhibited there, as well as the Striped Hyena and the Crocodile
of the Nile. In the ancient mosaics preserved at Rome, there are
excellent representations of the rarest of these animals. Among
others, the striped hyena is seen represented with accuracy in a
fragment preserved in the Museum of the Vatican; and, while I was
at Rome in 1809, a mosaic pavement, composed of natural stones,
arranged in the Florentine manner, was discovered in a garden beside
the triumphal arch of Galienus, which represented four Bengal tigers
executed in a superior manner.
In the Museum of the Vatican, there is deposited the figure of a
crocodile in basalt, which is almost a perfect representation of that
animal[58].
It cannot in the least be doubted, that the _Hippotigris_ was the
Zebra, which, however, is only found in the southern parts of
Africa[59].
It would be easy to shew that almost all the more remarkable
species of Apes and Monkeys have been distinctly indicated by the
ancients, under the names of _Pitheci_, _Sphinxes_, _Satyri_, _Cebi_,
_Cynocephali_, and _Cercopitheci_[60].
They even knew, and have described several species of Glires
of inconsiderable size, when these animals presented any thing
remarkable in their conformation or properties[61]. But the small
species are of no importance with reference to the object in view;
and, it is sufficient for our purpose to have shewn, that all the
large species, which possess any remarkable character, and which we
know to inhabit Europe, Asia, and Africa, at the present day, were
known to the ancients; whence we may fairly conclude, that their
silence in respect to the small quadrupeds, and their neglect in
distinguishing the species which very nearly resemble each other,
as the various species of antelopes, and of some other genera,
were occasioned by want of attention and ignorance of methodical
arrangement, rather than by any difficulty proceeding from climate.
We may also conclude, with equal certainty, that, as the lapse
of eighteen or twenty centuries, together with the advantages
of circumnavigating Africa, and of penetrating into India, have
added nothing in this department to the information left us by the
ancients, there is no probability that succeeding ages will add much
to the knowledge of our posterity.
But perhaps some persons may be disposed to employ an opposite
train of argument, and to allege that the ancients were not only
acquainted with as many large quadrupeds as we are, as has already
been shewn, but that they have described several others which we do
not now know,--that we act rashly in considering these animals as
fabulous,--that we ought to search for them before concluding that we
have exhausted the history of the present animal creation,--and, in
fine, that among those animals which we presume to be fabulous, we
may, perhaps, discover, when we become better acquainted with them,
the originals of those bones of unknown animals which we discover
buried in the earth. Some may even conceive, that those various
monsters, which constitute the essential ornaments of the history of
the heroic ages of almost all countries, are precisely those very
species which it was necessary to destroy, in order to allow the
establishment of civilization. Thus the Theseuses and Bellerophons
of ancient times had been more fortunate than all the nations of our
days, which have only been able to drive back the noxious animals,
but have never yet succeeded in exterminating a single species.
_Inquiry respecting the Fabulous Animals of the Ancients._
It is easy to reply to the foregoing objection, by examining
the descriptions of these unknown beings, and by inquiring into
their origins. The greater number of them have an origin purely
mythological, and of this origin their descriptions bear unequivocal
marks; for in almost all of them we see merely parts of known animals
united by an unbridled imagination, and in contradiction to all the
laws of nature.
Those which were invented or arranged by the Greeks, have at least
the merit of possessing elegance in their composition. Like those
arabesques which decorate the remains of some ancient buildings,
and which have been multiplied by the fertile pencil of Raphael, the
forms which they combine, however repugnant to reason they may be,
present agreeable contours. They are the fantastic productions of
playful genius; perhaps emblematic representations in the oriental
taste, in which were supposed to be concealed under mystical images
certain propositions in metaphysics or in morals. We may excuse those
who employ their time in attempts to discover the wisdom concealed in
the sphinx of Thebes, the pegasus of Thessaly, the minotaur of Crete,
or the chimera of Epirus; but it would be absurd to expect seriously
to find such productions in nature. As well might we search for the
animals described in the Book of Daniel, or for the beast of the
Apocalypse.
Neither may we look for the mythological animals of the Persians,
creatures of a still bolder imagination: the _martichore_, or
man-destroyer, bearing a human head on the body of a lion, terminated
by the tail of a scorpion[62]; the _griffon_, guardian of treasures,
half eagle, half lion[63]; the _cartazonon_, or wild ass, armed with
a long horn on its forehead[64].
Ctesias, who has described these as real animals, has been looked
upon by many authors as an inventor of fables; whereas he has merely
attributed an actual existence to emblematical figures. These
imaginary compositions have been seen in modern times sculptured upon
the ruins of Persepolis[65]. What they were intended to signify we
shall probably never know; but of this much we are certain, that they
do not represent actual beings.
Agatharchidas, another fabricator of animals, drew his information in
all probability from a similar source. The ancient Egyptian monuments
still furnish us with numerous fantastic representations, in which
the parts of different species are combined: gods are often figured
with a human body and the head of an animal, and animals are seen
with human heads; thus giving rise to the cynocephali, sphinxes, and
satyrs of ancient naturalists. The custom of representing in the same
painting men of very different sizes, of making the king or the
conqueror gigantic, the subjects or the conquered three or four times
smaller, must have given rise to the fable of the pigmies. It was in
some corner of one of these monuments that Agatharchidas must have
seen his carnivorous bull, which, with mouth extending from ear to
ear, devoured every other animal[66]. Certainly no naturalist would
admit the existence of such an animal; for nature never combines
either cloven hoofs or horns with teeth adapted for devouring animal
food.
There may perhaps have been many other figures equally strange,
either among such of these monuments as have not been able to resist
the ravages of time, or in the temples of Ethiopia and Arabia, which
have been destroyed by the religious zeal of the Mahometans and
Abyssinians. The monuments of India teem with such figures; but the
combinations in these are too extravagant to have deceived any one.
Monsters with a hundred arms, and twenty heads all different from
one another, are far too absurd to be believed. Nay, the inhabitants
of Japan and China also have their imaginary animals, which they
represent as real, and which figure even in their religious books.
The Mexicans had them. In short, they are the fashion among all
nations, whether at the periods when their idolatry has not yet
been refined, or when the import of these emblematical combinations
has been lost. But who would dare to affirm that he had found those
productions of ignorance and superstition in nature? And yet it may
have happened that travellers, influenced by a desire of making
themselves famous, might pretend that they had seen those strange
beings, or that, deceived by a slight resemblance, into which they
were too careless to enquire, they may have taken real animals for
them. In the eyes of such people, large baboons or monkeys may have
appeared true cynocephali, sphinxes, or men with tails. It is thus
that St Augustin may have imagined he had seen a satyr.
Some real animals, inaccurately observed and described, may have
given rise to monstrous ideas, which, however, have had their
foundation in some reality. Thus, we can have no doubt of the
existence of the hyena, although that animal has not its neck
supported by a single bone[67], and although it does not change its
sex every year, as Pliny alleges[68]. Thus, also, the carnivorous
bull is perhaps nothing else than a two-horned rhinoceros erroneously
described. M. de Weltheim affirms with probability, that the
auriferous ants of Herodotus are _corsacs_.
One of the most famous amongst these fabulous animals of the
ancients, is the _unicorn_. Even to our own time people have
obstinately persisted in searching for it, or, at least, in seeking
arguments to prove its existence. Three separate animals are
frequently mentioned by the ancients as having only one horn in the
middle of the forehead. The _African oryx_, having cloven hoofs, the
hair placed in the contrary direction to that of other animals[69],
equal in size to the bull[70] or even the rhinoceros[71], and said
to resemble deer and goats in form[72]; the _Indian ass_, having
solid hoofs; and the _monoceros_, properly so called, whose feet
are sometimes compared to those of the lion[73], and sometimes to
those of the elephant[74], and which is therefore considered as
having divided feet. The one-horned horse[75] and one-horned bull are
doubtless both to be referred to the Indian ass, for even the latter
is described as having solid hoofs[76]. I would ask, If these animals
exist as distinct species, should we not at least have their horns in
our collections? And what single horns do we possess, excepting those
of the rhinoceros and narwal?
How is it possible, after this, to refer to rude figures traced by
savages upon rocks[77]? Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to
represent a straight horned antelope in profile, they could only give
it a single horn, and thus they produced an oryx. The oryxes, too,
that are seen on the Egyptian monuments, are probably nothing more
than productions of the stiff style, imposed upon the artists of
that country by their religion. Many of their profiles of quadrupeds
shew only one fore and one hind leg; and this being the case, why
should they have shewn two horns? It may perhaps have chanced that
individuals have been taken in the chace, which had accidentally
lost one of their horns, as pretty frequently happens to the chamois
and saiga: and this would have been sufficient to confirm the error
produced by these representations. It is probably in this way that
the unicorn has recently been reported to be found in the mountains
of Thibet.
All the ancients, however, have not represented the oryx as having
only one horn. Oppian expressly gives it several[78], and Ælian
mentions oryxes which had four[79]. Finally, if this animal was
ruminant and cloven-hoofed, we know assuredly that its frontal bone
must have been longitudinally divided into two, and that it could
not, as is very justly remarked by Camper, have had a horn placed
upon the suture.
But it may be asked, What two-horned animal could have given the
idea of the oryx, and presented the characters which it is described
as possessing with regard to its conformation, even independent of
the notion of a single horn? To this I reply, with Pallas, that it
was the straight horned antelope, the _Antilope oryx_ of Gmelin,
improperly named _pasan_ by Buffon. It inhabits the deserts of
Africa, and must approach the confines of Egypt. It is this animal
which the hieroglyphics appear to represent. Its form is nearly
that of the stag; its size equals that of the bull; the hair of
its back is directed toward the head; its horns form exceedingly
formidable weapons, pointed like javelins, and hard as iron; its hair
is whitish, and its face is marked with spots and streaks of black.
Such is the description given of it by naturalists; and the fables
of the Egyptian priests, which have occasioned the insertion of its
figure among their hieroglyphics, do not require to have been founded
in nature. Supposing, therefore, that an individual of this species
had been seen which had lost one of its horns by some accident, it
might have been taken as a representative of the whole race, and
erroneously adopted by Aristotle, and copied by his successors. All
this is possible, and even natural, and yet proves nothing with
regard to the existence of a single-horned species.
In regard to the Indian ass, if we attend to the properties ascribed
to its horns as an antidote against poison, we shall see that they
are precisely the same as those which the eastern nations attribute
at the present day to the horn of the rhinoceros. When this horn was
first imported into Greece, the animal to which it belonged might
still have been unknown. In fact, Aristotle makes no mention of the
rhinoceros, and Agatharchides was the first who described it. In
the same manner, ivory was in use among the ancients long before
they were acquainted with the elephant. It is even possible that
some of their travellers might have given to the rhinoceros the name
of _Indian ass_, with as much propriety as the Romans denominated
the elephant the _bull of Lucania._ Every thing, moreover, that
is said of the strength, size, and ferocity of this wild ass of
theirs, corresponds very well with the rhinoceros. In succeeding
times, naturalists, who had now become better acquainted with the
rhinoceros, finding this denomination of _Indian ass_ in the writings
of authors who had preceded them, might have taken it, from want
of proper examination, for that of a distinct animal; and from the
name, they would have concluded the animal should have solid hoofs.
There is, indeed, a full description of the Indian ass given by
Ctesias[80], but we have seen above that it had been taken from the
bas-reliefs of Persepolis, and must therefore go for nothing in the
real history of the animal.
When there afterwards appeared more exact descriptions of an animal
having a single horn only, but with several toes, a third species
would have been made out, to which they gave the name of _monoceros_.
These double references applied to the same species, are more
frequent among ancient naturalists, because most of their works which
have come down to us were mere compilations; even because Aristotle
himself has frequently mingled facts borrowed from others with those
which he had observed himself; and because the habit of critical
examination was then as little known among naturalists as among
historians.
From all these reasonings and digressions, it may be fairly
concluded, that the large animals of the old continent with which we
are now acquainted, were known to the ancients; and that the animals
described by the ancients, and which are now unknown, were fabulous.
It also follows, that the large animals of the three principal parts
of the then discovered world could not have been long in being known
to the nations which frequented their coasts.
It may also be concluded, that no large species remains to be
discovered in America. If there were any, there can be no reason
why we should not be acquainted with it; and in fact none has been
discovered there during the last hundred and fifty years. The tapir,
the jaguar, the puma, the cabiai, the llama, the vicuna, the red
wolf, the buffalo or American bison, the ant-eaters, sloths and
armadilloes, are as well described by Margrave and Hernandez as by
Buffon; it may even be said that they are better, for Buffon has
confused the history of the ant-eaters, mistaken the jaguar and
red wolf, and confounded the bison of America with the aurochs of
Poland. Pennant, it is true, was the first naturalist who clearly
distinguished the small musk ox; but it was long before made mention
of by travellers. The cloven-footed horse of Molina, has not been
described by the early Spanish travellers; but its existence is
more than doubtful, and the authority of Molina is too suspicious
to authorise our adopting it. It might be possible to characterise
more accurately than has been done the different species of deer
belonging to America and India; but the case is with respect to these
animals as it was among the ancients with respect to the antelopes;
it is the want of a good method for distinguishing them, and not
of opportunities of seeing them, that has left them so imperfectly
known to us. It may, therefore, be said, that the Mouflon of the Blue
Mountains is the only American quadruped of any considerable size of
which the discovery is altogether modern; and even it is perhaps only
an argali that may have crossed upon the ice from Siberia.
How should it be thought, after this, that the huge _mastodons_ and
gigantic _megatheria_, whose bones have been discovered under ground
in North and South America, still exist alive on that continent? How
should they have escaped those wandering tribes which continually
traverse the country in all directions, and which are themselves
aware that these animals no longer exist, since they have invented a
fabulous account of their destruction, alleging that they were killed
by the Great Spirit, to prevent them from extirpating the human
race. But it is evident that this fable has been occasioned by the
discovery of the bones, like that of the inhabitants of Siberia with
respect to their mammoth, which they pretend to live under ground
like the mole, and, like all those of the ancients, about the graves
of giants, who were thought by them to have been buried wherever the
bones of elephants were discovered.
Thus it may safely be concluded, that if, as we have just said, none
of the large species of quadrupeds whose remains are at the present
day found in regular mineral strata, bear resemblance to any of the
known living species, this is not the effect of mere chance, nor
because those species of which we possess nothing but the bones,
are still concealed in the deserts, and have hitherto eluded the
observation of travellers. On the contrary, this phenomenon must be
regarded as resulting from general causes; and its investigation may
be considered as affording one of the best means for discovering the
nature of these causes.
_Difficulty of determining the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds._
If this study is more satisfactory in its results than that of other
fossil remains of animals, it is also beset with more numerous
difficulties. Fossil shells usually present themselves in an entire
state, and with all the characters requisite for comparing them with
their analogous species, preserved in the collections or figured in
the works of naturalists. Even fishes present their skeleton more
or less entire; the general form of their body is almost always
distinguishable, and most commonly, also, their generic and specific
characters, which are drawn from their solid parts. In quadrupeds,
on the contrary, even should the skeleton be found entire, it would
be difficult to apply to it characters derived, for the most part,
from the hair, the colours, and other marks which have disappeared
previous to their incrustation. It is even excessively rare to find a
fossil skeleton approaching in any considerable degree to a complete
state. The strata, for the most part, only contain separate bones,
scattered confusedly, and almost always broken, and reduced to
fragments; and these constitute the only resources of knowledge to
the naturalist in this department. It may also be stated, that most
observers, deterred by these difficulties, have passed slightly over
the fossil bones of quadrupeds; have classed them in a vague manner,
according to superficial resemblances, or have not even ventured
to assign them a name; so that this part of the history of fossil
remains, although the most important and most instructive of all, is,
at the same time, that which has been the least cultivated[81].
_Principle by which this determination is effected._
Fortunately, comparative anatomy possesses a principle, which, when
properly developed, enables us to surmount all the obstacles. This
principle consists in the mutual relation of forms in organised
beings, by means of which, each species may be determined, with
perfect certainty, by any fragment of any of its parts.