Part 5

This reasoning is confirmed by well known facts. Although the ancients never passed the mountains of Imaus, or crossed the Ganges, in Asia; and, although they never penetrated very far beyond Mount Atlas, in Africa; yet were they, in reality, acquainted with all the large animals of these two divisions of the world; and, if they have not distinguished all the species, it was not because they had not seen them, or heard them spoken of by others, but because the mutual resemblances of some of these species caused them to be confounded together. The only important exception which can be opposed to this assertion, presents itself in the Tapir of Malacca, recently sent home from India by two young naturalists, pupils of mine, Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, and which in fact is one of the most interesting discoveries with which Natural History has been enriched in these latter times.

The ancients were perfectly acquainted with the Elephant; and the history of that quadruped is given more accurately by Aristotle than by Buffon. They were not even ignorant of some of the differences which distinguish the elephants of Africa from those of Asia[32].

They knew the two-horned Rhinoceros, which has never been seen alive in modern Europe. Domitian exhibited it at Rome, and had it stamped on his medals, which have been very well described by Pausanias.

The one-horned Rhinoceros, distant as was its country, was equally known to them. Pompey shewed one at Rome; and Strabo has accurately described another which he saw at Alexandria[33].

The Rhinoceros of Sumatra described by Mr Bell; and that of Java, discovered and sent home by Messrs Duvaucel and Diard, do not appear to inhabit the continent. Hence, it is not surprising, that the ancients should have been ignorant of them; besides, they probably would not have distinguished them from the others.

The Hippopotamus has not been so well described as the preceding animals; yet very exact representations of it have been left by the Romans in their monuments relative to Egypt, such as the statue of the Nile, the Palestrine pavement, and a great number of medals. In fact, this animal was repeatedly seen by the Romans; having been exhibited by Scaurus, Augustus, Antoninus, Commodus, Heliogabalus, Philip, and Carinus[34].

The two species of Camel, the Bactrian and Arabian, are both very well described and characterized by Aristotle[35].

The Giraffe, or Camelopard (Camel-Leopard), was also well known to 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.