But there is, further, in all "seeing" before even a mental result of attention to the retinal picture is, as it were, "passed," admitted and registered as "a thing seen," the further operation of rapid criticism or judgment, brief though it be. We are always unconsciously forming lightning-like judgments by the use of our eyes, rejecting the improbable, and (as we consider) preposterous, and accepting and therefore "seeing" what our judgment approves even when it is not there! We accept as "a thing seen" a wheel buzzing round with something like fifty spokes—but we cannot accept a horse with eight or sixteen legs! The four-leggedness of a horse is too dominant a prejudice for us to accept a horse with several indistinct blurred legs as representing what we see when the horse gallops. The mind revolts at such a presentation, though it is true, and the whole scheme and composition of the artist is perverted or fails to gain attention and to exercise its charm—by the unwelcome presence in his picture of the revolting truth. It is the consideration of facts of this kind which enables us to understand the origin and importance of what are called "conventions" in pictorial or glyptic art. The artist is, in fact, operating by means of his painted canvas or moulded clay upon a queer, prejudiced, ill-seeing, dull, living creature—his brother-man. In order to give if possible to that brother, by means of a painted sheet, some or all of the delights, emotions, suggestions, perceptions of beauty, and so on, which he himself has experienced in contemplating a real scene, the artist has to present that scene, not as it really is, nor even as he thinks it really is, but in such a way that his canvas shall appeal to his brother's attention and judgment with the same emotional and intellectual result as the scene itself produced in him. Therefore he must not aim at accuracy of reproduction of natural fact nor even of visual fact, but at the transference to another mind of his own mental condition—his inner judgment as to "things seen"—by means of necessarily imperfect pictorial mimicry. He must therefore avoid startling or abnormal truthfulness of observation of the unessential and even more strictly must he refuse to make his picture a scientific diagram demonstrating what "is" rather than what is "seen" or is "thought to have been seen."

On these grounds I find that the most satisfactory pictures of the galloping horse are those which combine a phase of the movement of the front legs with a phase of the movement of the hind legs, not simultaneous in actual occurrence, but following one another. It is for the artist to select the combination best suited to producing the mental result aimed at. Some of the Chinese and Japanese representations of the galloping horse and some of their European imitations (but not all—certainly not that of Stubbs, of the Epsom Derby of Gericault, and the racing plates) seem to me to be eminently satisfactory and successful in this respect. In the pictures to which I allude (Pl. III, figs. 3 and 5) all the legs are off the ground; the front legs are advanced, but one or both may be more or less flexed, whilst the hind legs, though directed backwards with upturned hoofs, are not nearly horizontal (as they actually are in the galloping dog), but show the moderate extension which really occurs in the horse, and is recorded by instantaneous photography. This pose, favoured by many European and Japanese artists, can be obtained by uniting the outstretched hind legs of fig. 9 of the Muybridge series (Pl. I), with the outstretched forelegs of fig. 6, as shown in Pl. I, fig. 12, or by uniting the hind legs of fig. 10 with the forelegs of fig. 4 as shown in Pl. III, fig. 1.

With regard to the representation of other "gaits" of the horse than that of the rapid gallop—such as canter, trot, amble, rack, and walk—I have no doubt that instantaneous photography can (and in practice does) furnish the painter with perfectly correct and at the same time useful and satisfactory poses of the horse's limbs. These, though of longer duration than the poses of the gallop, can only be correctly estimated by the eye with great difficulty, and only sketched by artists of exceptional skill and patience. The movement of the wings of birds in flight has been very successfully analysed by instantaneous photography. Some of the poses revealed must familiarise the public with what can be, and, in fact, has been, observed in the case of large sea-birds, by the unassisted eye, and has been represented in pictures by the more careful observers of nature among modern painters. A large sea-bird sailing along with apparently motionless wings has been photographed in the act of giving a single stroke so rapid as to escape observation by the eye.

An interesting question in regard to the movements of the horse is that as to how far any known "pace" is natural to that animal, and how far it has been acquired by training and is, in a sense, artificial. We know so little of the wild horse, and of the more abundant wild asses and zebras, that it is difficult to say anything precise on this question. There is only one region in which the true original wild horse of the northern part of Asia and Europe still exists. That is the Gobi Desert, in Central Asia. This horse is known as Prevalsky's wild horse, in honour of the Russian traveller who discovered it. Live specimens are now to be seen in the Zoological Gardens and elsewhere. It closely resembles the drawings of horses made by the palaeolithic Cromagnard cave-men. A century ago a wild horse, probably of the same race as this, inhabited the Kirghiz Steppes, and was known as the Tarpan: it is now extinct. The more southern Arabian horse is not known in the wild state, whilst the wild horses of America are descendants of domesticated European horses which have "run wild." I do not know of any studies of the movements of the true wild horse, nor of those of wild asses and zebras, carried out by the aid of instantaneous photography. It would be interesting to know whether untaught wild "equines" would fall naturally into the gaits known as "the amble" and "the rack," or whether the walk, the trot, and the gallop are their only natural gaits.

The amble, in which the fore and hind leg on the same side are advanced simultaneously, is a natural gait of the elephant, the fastest Muybridge could get from that great beast. He made a menagerie elephant amble at the rate of a mile in seven minutes. The only other animal known to habitually exhibit "the amble" is the giraffe. It is often exhibited by the giraffes in the Zoological Gardens in London, but has not, I believe, been recorded by a series of instantaneous photographs. When going at full speed over the grass wilds of Central Africa the giraffe exhibits a gait more like the galloping of deer and antelopes, and carries the long neck horizontally. No complete study of the "gaits" of large animals other than the horse has been made, since menagerie specimens and menagerie conditions are not satisfactory for the purpose, and, unfortunately, it has not been possible as yet to take series of photographs of them in their wild conditions.

The electric spark furnishes a most important means of taking instantaneous photographs, but the operator must perform in the dark. An electric spark can be obtained which lasts only the one two-thousandth of a second, and by its use as the sole illuminating agent we can get a photograph of a phase of movement lasting only that excessively short space of time, or, if we please, a succession of such phases by using a succession of sparks. Thus, a rifle bullet is readily photographed while in flight with scarcely perceptible distortion. A wheel revolving many hundred times a second can thus be photographed, and appears to be stationary. Dr. Schillings has applied this method to the photography of wild animals by night in the forests of tropical Africa, and has published an interesting book giving his photographic results. In order to take these pictures the track followed by certain animals has to be detected, and then a thread is stretched "breast-high" across the track, so that the animal coming along it by night shall pull the thread. Immediately the thread is pulled it sets an electric contact in action. There is a brief flash of one two-thousandth of a second, and a picture is taken by a camera previously fixed, out of harm's way, so as to focus the area where the thread was stretched.

Dr. Schillings obtained some very remarkable photographs of "the night life of the forest" in this way—lions and leopards advancing on their prey were suddenly revealed, and the helpless antelope or other victim was shown crouching in the dark, or making a desperate effort to escape.

The electric-spark method was applied by a friend of mine to demonstrate the movements by which a kitten falling backwards from a table succeeds in turning itself so as to alight on its feet. During a fall of less than 3 feet he obtained five successive spark-pictures of the kitten, which, I beg it may be clearly understood, was a pet kitten, and was neither frightened nor hurt by the proceedings.

Instantaneous photographs, whether obtained by the use of an electric spark as a means of illumination, or by the less rapid method of a spring shutter working in combination with a sensitive film, which is jerked along so as to be exposed when the shutter is open and travel when it is shut, has been applied to the analysis of other movements than those I have mentioned, and has yet to be applied to many more, such as the crawling of insects and millipedes, and the beautiful rippling movement of the legs and body by which many marine worms swim. It has been extensively used in the study of human locomotion, and of the successive poses of the arms and legs in various athletic exercises, and in such games as baseball and golf.

A first-rate fencer of my acquaintance had a five-minutes' film of himself taken when fencing, giving 10,000 consecutive poses. He wished to see exactly what movements he made, and to ascertain by this minute examination any error or want of grace in his action, in order to avoid it. An unexpected picture is obtained when a man or woman is thus "biographed" whilst walking rapidly, and suddenly turns to the right or left. A fraction of a second occurs when the toes of the two feet are directed towards one another (that is to say, are "turned in"), as one of the legs swings round in the break-off to right or left. This instantaneous phase is very awkward and ugly in appearance. It is never pictured by artists, although regularly occurring, and seems to have been as little known before instantaneous photography was introduced as were most of the phases of the horse's gallop. The positions assumed when in the air by a high-jump athlete are almost incredible as revealed by the camera. He appears to be sitting in a most uncomfortable way on the rope over which he is projecting himself.

A very fine attitude is fixed for the artist in one of Muybridge's instantaneous series of the "bowler"—the cricket "bowler." The up-lifted right arm, the curve outwards of the whole figure on the right side, and the free hang of the right leg make a most effective pose for a sculptor to reproduce. Among the most remarkable results obtained in Muybridge's series are the stages of the growth or development of strong "expression" in the face. The anxiety in the face of the baseball batsman as he awaits the ball is painful; as he hits at the ball his expression is one of savage ferocity, and in a fraction of a second this gives place to a dawning smile, which as we pass along two or three later "instantanees" develops into a broad grin of satisfaction. Another genuine study of expression both of face and gesture and movement is given in the series where a pailful of cold water is unexpectedly poured over the back of a bather seated in a sitz bath—astonishment, dismay, anger, eagerness to escape, and the reaction to shock are all clearly shown. Darwin's studies on "the expression of the emotions" would have been greatly assisted by such analysis, and the subject might even now be developed by the use of serial instantaneous records obtained by photography. It may be useful to those interested in this subject to know that copies of Muybridge's large series of instantaneous photographs[3] of animal and human subjects in movement are preserved both in the library of the Royal Academy of Arts in London and in the Radcliffe Library at Oxford. I may also mention the extremely valuable series of instantaneous photographs of living bacteria, blood-parasites and infusoria produced by MM. Pathe, and the series of fishes and various invertebrates (including the curious caterpillar-like Peripatus) taken by Mr. Martin Duncan.

The representation of the moon in pictures of the ordinary size (some three feet long by two in height) is a case in which the artist habitually—one may almost say invariably—departs greatly from scientific truth, and it is a question as to whether he is justified in what he does. Take first the case of the low-lying moon near the horizon as contrasted with the high moon. Everyone knows that the moon (and the sun[4] also) appears to be much bigger when it is low than when it is high. Everyone who has not looked into the matter closely is prepared to maintain that the luminous disc in the sky—whether of moon or of sun—not merely seems to, but actually does, occupy a bigger space when it is low down near the horizon than when it is high up, more nearly overhead. Of course, no one nowadays imagines that the moon or the sun swells as it sinks or diminishes in volume as it rises. Those who think about it at all, say that the greater length of atmosphere through which one sees the low sun or moon, as compared with the high, magnifies the disc as a lens might do. This, however, is not the case. If we take a photograph of the moon when low and another with the same instrument and the same focus when it is high, we find that the celestial disc produces on the plate (as it does on our eyes) a picture-disc of practically the same size in both positions. In fact, the high moon or sun produces a picture-disc of a little larger size than the low moon or sun. I have here reproduced (Pl. IV) a photograph, published by M. Flammarion, in which the moon has been allowed to print itself on a photographic plate exposed during the time the moon was rising, and it is seen that the track of the moon has not diminished in width as it rose higher and higher. No one will readily believe this, yet it is a demonstrable fact. Astronomers have made accurate measurements which show that there is no diminution of the disc under these circumstances, but a slight increase—since the moon is a very little nearer to us when overhead than when we see it across the horizon.

[Illustration: Plate IV.—The track of the rising moon registered by continuous exposure of a photographic plate. It is given here in order to show that the diameter of the visible disc of the moon does not diminish as it rises. The slight increase in the breadth of the track registered by the moon's disc is probably due to a little distortion caused by the side portion of the lens. After M. Flammarion. The actual width of the moon's disc as printed here is a little over one eighth of an inch, which, if we regard it as "a picture" and not merely as a mechanical record, implies that the observer's eye is only about 14-1/2 inches distant from the picture plane instead of the more usual 18 inches, which corresponds to a diameter of the pictured moon's disc of between 1/6th and 1/7th of an inch (.156 inch).]

If we put a piece of glass coated with a thin layer of water-colour paint into a frame, and then make a peep-hole in a board which we fix upright between us and the upright piece of framed glass, we can keep the framed glass steady (let us suppose it to be part of the window of a room), and then we can move the peep-hole board back from it into the room to measured distances. At a distance of one and a half feet from the framed glass, which is that at which an artist usually has his eye from his canvas or paper, we can trace on the smeared or tinted piece of glass the outlines of things seen through it exactly as they fill up the area of the glass—men, houses, trees, the moon. The moon's disc (and the same is true of the sun) is found always to occupy a space on the glass which is 1/115th of the distance of the eye from the framed glass plate. When the eye-to-frame distance is eighteen inches, the diameter of the disc of the moon on the smeared glass will occupy exactly 1/115th of eighteen inches, which is between one-sixth and one-seventh of an inch. Similarly if the peep-hole is at nine and a half feet or 114 inches from the framed glass (which stands for us as the equivalent of an artist's picture) the moon will occupy almost exactly one inch in diameter—the size of a halfpenny. With such a simple apparatus of peep-hole and smeared glass in an upright frame, it is easy to mark off the size covered by the moon (or sun), whether low or high, on the smeared glass, and it is found never to vary whether high or low—so long as the same "eye-to-frame" or "peep-hole" distance is preserved. That seems to be an important fact for painters of sun-sets and moon-rises. But what do they do? They never give the right size (namely one-sixth of an inch) which corresponds to an eye-to-frame distance of eighteen inches. They give to a high moon, if they are very careful, a quarter of an inch for diameter. This means that the observer is about two and a half feet, or thirty inches from the picture—nearly twice what the artist's eye really is as he paints. And then—if painting a moon-rise or sunset—they suddenly pretend to go to a distance of nine and a half feet from the picture and make the moon an inch across because it is low down, or even give the moon two inches in diameter, which would mean that they (and those who look at the picture when hung up for view) are observing at nineteen feet distance from the front plane or frame of the picture. They do not alter the other features in the picture to suit this change of distance of the eye from the frame and there is no warning given. Certainly there is no obvious and necessary reason for treating a picture containing a high moon as though you were three feet from the front plane of the scene presented, and a low moon as though you were twenty feet from that plane! The confusion which may result in the representation of other objects when these changes of eye-to-frame distance are made is shown by the following simple facts. According to the simple laws of perspective, if the eye is at thirty inches from the picture-plane or frame (as declared by a moon drawn of a little more than a quarter of an inch broad), a post or a man six feet high drawn on the canvas as three inches high absolutely and definitely means that that man or post is sixty feet away from the observer inside the picture. The height of the represented object is the same fraction of the real object as the eye-to-frame distance is of the distance of the observer to the real object. If by a two-inch moon the artist has thrown you back from the front plane of the scene to a distance of nineteen feet, then the six-foot post or man drawn as three inches high definitely asserts that it or he is 456 feet distant within the picture. So, too, if the church tower which cuts the moon is really sixty feet high and is drawn of two inches vertical measure in the picture, it is an assertion—when the moon is represented one quarter of an inch broad—that the church tower is 290 yards, or a sixth of a mile distant. If, on the other hand, other things remaining the same, the moon is drawn two inches in diameter, the church tower is now asserted to be eight times as far off, or about a mile and a third. Very generally these facts are not considered by painters. They represent the low moon (or sun) big because the erroneous mental impression is common to all of us that it is big—that is, bigger, much bigger, than the high moon or sun, and they do not follow out the consequences in perspective of the pictorial increase of the moon's apparent diameter.

If we could ascertain why it is that the low moon produces a false impression of being bigger—as a mere disc in the scene—than does the high moon, we might be able to discover how an artist could produce, as Nature does, an impression or belief in its greater size whilst keeping it all the time to its proper size. The explanation of the illusion as to the increased size of the sun's or moon's disc when low, given by M. Flammarion and other astronomers, is that the low sun or moon is unconsciously judged by us as an object at a greater distance than the high moon or sun. This is due to the long vista of arching clouds above and of stretching landscape or sea below when the sun or moon is looked at as it appears on or near the horizon. The illusion is aided by the dulness of the low moon and the brightness (supposed nearness) of the high moon. Being judged of (unconsciously) as further off than the high moon, the low moon is estimated as of larger size although of the same size. This is, I believe, the correct explanation of the illusion. When one gazes upwards to the sky, a small insect slowly flying across the line of sight sometimes is "judged of" as a huge bird—an eagle or a vulture—since we refer it to a distance at which birds fly and not to the shorter distance to which insects approach us. It seems that it would be possible for the painter, by carefully studying actual natural facts and introducing their presentation into his picture, to produce the impression of greater distance, and therefore of size, into a quarter-inch moon placed near the horizon. He is not compelled for want of other means to "cut the difficulty" and paint a falsely inflated moon which shall brutally and by measurement call up the illusion of increased size. I reproduce here (Pl. V) an interesting drawing which shows how such illusions of size can be produced. It is none the worse for my purpose because it is an advertisement by the well-known firm who have kindly lent it to me. The three figures represented in black are all of the same height, yet the furthest one appears to be much taller and bigger altogether than the middle one, and the middle one than the nearest. This result is obtained by suggesting distance as separating the right-hand figure from us, whilst giving it exactly the same height as the others. This seems to me to be a simple case of an illusion of increased size produced by a suggestion of increased distance when all the time there is equality in size—as in the case of the moon on the horizon compared with the moon overhead. It would be interesting to see an attempt on the part of a competent painter to produce in this way (which is, I believe, Nature's way) the illusion of increased size in a low-lying moon without really increasing the visual size of his painted moon as compared with one in another picture (to be painted by him) representing the moon bright, clear and small, overhead.

[Illustration: Plate V.—Drawing of three figures—Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Asquith—showing how an illusion of size may be produced in a picture. The figure of Mr. Asquith is of the same actual vertical measurement as that of Lord Lansdowne, viz. two inches and one eighth. Yet owing to the position in which the three figures are placed and the converging lines—suggesting perspective—the drawing of Mr. Asquith does not merely represent a much taller man than does that of Lord Lansdowne, but actually gives the impression, at first sight, that the little black figure representing Mr. Asquith is longer and bigger altogether than that representing Lord Lansdowne. Yet the figures are of the same dimensions. It is owing to illusion of the same nature that the disc of the low moon appears larger than that of the high moon.]

The theatrical scene-painter has another kind of difficulty with the low moon and the setting sun. He can never be right for more than one row of seats—one distance—in the theatre. Here there is no peep-hole, no frame or picture-plane. The observer is in the picture. If the moon is represented by an illuminated disc of one foot in diameter, it will, when looked at at a distance of 115 feet, have the same visual size as the moon itself, but if your seat is nearer the scene it will look too large, if further off it will look too small. There is no getting over this difficulty, as the standard of actual Nature is set up on the stage by the men and women appearing on it at a known distance. It used to be asked in classical times by ingenious puzzle-makers—"What is the size of the moon?" A true answer to that question would be "that of a plate a foot in diameter seen at a distance of a hundred and fifteen feet."

To a large extent the painter, like other artists, has to produce things which do not shock common opinion and experience, and must even consciously concede to that necessity, and make the sacrifice of objective truth, in order to secure attention for his higher appeal to the sense of beauty, to emotion, and sentiment. Approved departures by the artist from scientific truth are those which are deliberately made in order to give emphasis—as, for instance, in the huge, but tender hand of the man in the emotional masterpiece, "Le Baiser," by the great sculptor Rodin. Another departure from objective truth which is justified, is seen in Troyon's picture in the Louvre, where the false drawing and exaggerated size of the leg of a calf advancing towards the observer suggest, and almost give the illusion of, movement.

But it can hardly be maintained that any and all the liberties which a painter or a whole school of painters choose to take with fact in their presentation of Nature—are beyond criticism. It is possible for a landscape painter to improve in his treatment of the moon by better observation and increased knowledge—just as other painters have learnt not to introduce into their pictures the sort of wooden rocking-horse to stand for a beautiful living animal, which satisfied Velasquez, Carl Vernet and the ancient Egyptians.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See note on page 46.]

[Footnote 2: "La Representation du Galop dans l'art ancien et moderne," 'Revue Archeologique,' vol. XXXVI et seq., 1900.]

[Footnote 3: A word is needed in amplification of what was said on p. 26 as to the blending of successive images produced on the retina of the eye by the bioscope or cinematograph or by the old "wheel of life." The point which is of importance is not the length of time during which the stimulation of the retina caused by an image endures—becoming weaker and weaker as fractions of a second pass—but it is this: How long will a stimulus last in undiminished brightness? How soon must it be followed by another stimulus (another image) so that there may be fusion or continuity, the one succeeding the other before the earlier has had time, not to disappear, but to decline. If it has had time to decline in intensity, the appearance of flickering results. That is what the cinematographer has to avoid. It is found that a quicker succession—a shorter interval—is necessary with strong light than with weaker light in order to produce continuity. With a faint light the interval may be as great as one-tenth of a second; with a strong light it must not exceed one-thirtieth (or with still stronger light, one-sixtieth) of a second. With the stronger light there is a more rapid and a greater loss of the initial intensity of the impression or effect of stimulus, and though each successive effect remains as long, or longer, in dwindling intensity, you get want of continuity, or "flicker."]

[Footnote 4: What we may call the "visual size" of the sun happens to be owing to its far greater size and its far greater distance from us—very nearly the same as that of the moon—and is subject to the same numerical law of apparent diameter, viz. a disc of any given measurement in diameter will cover it exactly when held at a distance from the eye which is 115 times that measurement.]



CHAPTER V

THE JEWEL IN THE TOAD'S HEAD

To what jewel or precious stone was Shakespeare alluding when he makes the exiled Duke in "As You Like It" (after praising his rough life in the forest of Arden, and declaring that adversity has its compensations), exclaim:

"The toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head"?

No doubt the unprejudiced reader supposes when he reads this passage that there is some stone or stone-like body in the head of the toad which has a special beauty, or else was believed to possess magical or medicinal properties. And it is probable that Shakespeare himself did suppose that such a stone existed. As a matter of fact there is no stone or "jewel" of any kind in the head of the common toad nor of any species of toad—common or rare. This is a simple and certain result of the careful examination of the heads of innumerable toads, and is not merely "common knowledge," but actually the last word of the scientific expert. In these days of "nature study" writers familiar with toads and frogs and kindred beasts have puzzled over Shakespeare's words, and suggested that he was really referring to the beautiful eyes of the toad, which are like gems in colour and brilliance.

This, however, is not the case. Shakespeare himself was simply making use of what was considered to be "common knowledge" in his day when he made the Duke compare adversity to the toad with a magic jewel in its head commonly known as "a toad-stone," although that "common knowledge" was really not knowledge at all, but—like an enormous mass of the accepted current statements in those times, about animals, plants and stones—was an absolutely baseless invention. Such baseless beliefs were due to the perfectly innocent but reckless habit of mankind, throughout long ages, of exaggerating and building up marvellous narrations on the one hand, and on the other hand of believing without any sufficient inquiry, and with delight and enthusiasm, such marvellous narrations set down by others. Each writer or "gossip" concerning the wonders of unexplored nature, consciously or unconsciously, added a little to the story as received by him, and so the authoritative statements as to marvels grew more and more astonishing and interesting.

It was not until the time of Shakespeare himself that another spirit began to assert itself—namely, that of asking whether a prevalent belief or tradition is actually a true statement of fact. Men proceeded to test the belief by an examination of the thing in question, and not by merely adducing the assertions of "the learned so-and-so," or of "the ingenious Mr. Dash." This spirit of inquiry actually existed in a fairly active state among the more cultivated of the ancient Greeks. Aristotle (who flourished about 350 B.C.), though he could not free himself altogether from the primitive tendency to accept the marvellous as true because it is marvellous and without regard to its probability—in fact because of its improbability—yet on the whole showed a determination to investigate, and to see things for himself, and left in his writings an immense series of first-rate original observations. He had far more of the modern scientific spirit than had the innumerable credulous writers of Western Europe who lived fifteen hundred to two thousand years after him. Even that delightful person Herodotus, who preceded Aristotle by a hundred years, occasionally took the trouble to inquire into some of the wonders he heard of on his travels, and is careful to say now and then that he does not believe what he heard. But the mediaeval-makers of "bestiaries," herbals, and treatises on stones, which were collections of every possible fancy and "old-wife's tale," about animals, plants, and minerals, mixed up with Greek and Arabic legends and the mystical, medical lore of the "Physiologus"—that Byzantine cyclopaedia of "wisdom while you wait"—deliberately discarded all attempt to set down the truth; they simply gave that up as a bad job, and recorded every strange story, property and "application" (as they termed it) of natural objects with solemn assurance, adding a bit of their own invention to the gathered and growing mass of preposterous misunderstanding and superstition.

In the seventeenth century the opposition to this method of omnivorous credulity (which even to-day, in spite of all our "progress," flourishes among both the rich and the poor) crystallised in the purpose of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge—whose motto was, and is "Nullius in verba" (that is, "We swear by no man's words"), and whose original first rule, to be observed at its meetings, was that no one should discourse of his opinions or narrate a marvel, but that any member who wished to address the society should "bring in," that is to say, "exhibit" an experiment or an actual specimen. A new spirit, the "scientific" spirit, gave rise to and was nourished by this and similar societies of learned men. As a consequence the absurdities and the cruel and injurious beliefs in witchcraft, astrology, and baseless legend, melted away like clouds before the rising sun. In the place of the mad nightmare of fantastic ignorance, there grew up the solid body of unassailable knowledge of Nature and of man which we call "science"—a growth which made such prodigious strides in the last century that we now may truly be said to live in the presence of a new heaven and a new earth!



It was, then, a real "stone," called the toad-stone, to which Shakespeare alluded. It is mentioned in various old treatises concerning the magical and medicinal properties of gems and stones under its Latin name, "Bufonius lapis," and was also called Borax, Nosa, Crapondinus, Crapaudina, Chelonitis, and Batrachites. It was also called Grateriano and Garatronius, after a gentleman named Gratterus, who in 1473 found a very large one, reputed to have marvellous power. In 1657, in the "translation by a person of quality" of the "Thaumatographia" of a Polish physician named Jonstonus, we find written of it: "Toads produce a stone, with their own image sometimes. It hath very great force against malignant tumours that are venomous. They are used to heat it in a bag, and to lay it hot, without anything between, to the naked body, and to rub the affected place with it. They say it prevails against inchantments of witches, especially for women and children bewitched. So soon as you apply it to one bewitched it sweats many drops. In the plague it is laid to the heart to strengthen it." Another physician of the same period (see "Notes and Queries," fourth series, vol. vii, 1871, p. 540) appears to be affected by the new spirit of inquiry, for he relates the old traditions about the stone and how he tested them. He says it was reported that the stone could be cut out of the toad's head. (In the book called "Hortus Sanitatis," dated 1490, there is a picture, here reproduced [Fig. 4], of a gentleman performing this operation successfully on a gigantic toad.) Our sceptical physician, however, goes on to say that it was commonly believed that these stones are thrown out of the mouth by old toads (probably the tongue was mistaken for the stone), and that if toads are placed on a piece of red cloth they will eject their "toad-stones," but rapidly swallow them again before one can seize the precious gem! He says that when he was a boy he procured an aged toad and placed it on a red cloth in order to obtain possession of "the stone." He sat watching the toad all night, but the toad did not eject anything. "Since that time," he says, "I have always regarded as humbug ('badineries') all that they relate of the toad-stone and of its origin." He then describes the actual stone which passes as the toad-stone, or "Bufonius lapis," and says that it is also called batrachite, or brontia, or ombria. His description exactly corresponds with the "toad-stones" which are well known at the present day in collections of old rings.



I have examined twelve of these rings in the British Museum, through the kindness of Sir Charles Read, P.S.A., the Keeper of Mediaeval Antiquities, and four in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Two of these are of chalcedony, with a figure of a toad roughly carved on the stone, and are of a character and origin different from the others. The others, which are the true and recognised "toad-stones" or "Bufonius lapis," are circular, slightly convex "stones," of a drab colour, with a smooth enamel-like surface. They are plate-like discs, being of thin substance and concave on the lower surface, which has an upstanding rim. I recognised them at once as the palatal teeth of a fossil fish called "Lepidotus," common in our own oolitic and wealden strata, and in rocks of that age all over the world. I give in Fig. 5 a drawing of a complete set of these teeth and of a single one detached. They were white and colourless in life, but are stained of various colours according to the nature of the rock in which they were embedded. A drab colour like that of the skin of the common toad is given to them by the iron salts present in many oolitic rocks; those found in the wealden of the Isle of Wight are black. That the "toad-stones" mounted in ancient rings are really the teeth of a fish has been already recorded by the Rev. R. H. Newell ("The Zoology of the English Poets," 1845), but he seems to be mistaken in identifying them with those of the wolf-fish (Anarrhicas). They undoubtedly are the palatal teeth of the fossil extinct ganoid fish Lepidotus.

Before leaving the queer inventions and assertions of the old writers about these fossil teeth, which they declared to be taken out of the toad's head, let me quote one delightful passage from a contemporary of Shakespeare (Lupton: "A thousand notable things of sundry sortes. Whereof some are wonderful, some strange, some pleasant, divers necessary, a great sort profitable, and many very precious," London, 1595). "You shall know," he says, "whether the Toadstone called 'crapaudina' be the right and perfect stone or not. Hold the stone before a toad, so that he may see it. And if it be a right and true stone, the toad will leap towards it and make as though he would snatch it from you; he envieth so much that a man should have that stone. This was credibly told Mizaldus for truth by one of the French King's physicians, which affirmed that he did see the trial thereof."

We have thus before us the actual things called toad-stones, and believed by Shakespeare and his contemporaries to be found in the head of the toad. How did it come about that these pretty little button-like, drab-coloured fossil teeth were given such an erroneous history? This question was answered by the late Rev. C. W. King, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his book on "Antique Gems" (London, 1860). He says, "I am not aware if any substance of a stony nature is ever now discovered within the head or body of the toad. Probably the whole story originated in the name Batrachites (frog-stone or toad-stone), given in Pliny to a gem brought from Coptos, and so called from its resemblance to that animal in colour." We have not, it must be noted, any specimens of the toad-stone at the present day actually known to have been brought from Coptos. It is quite possible that the fossil fish-tooth was substituted ages ago for Pliny's Batrachites, and was never found at Coptos at all! Whether that is so or not, the fact is that Pliny never said it came out of a toad, but merely that it was of the colour of a toad.

The Pliny referred to is Pliny the Elder, the celebrated Roman naturalist who wrote a great treatise on natural history, which we still possess, and died in A.D. 79 whilst visiting the eruption of Vesuvius. He says nothing of the Batrachites being found inside the toad, nor does he mention its medicinal virtues. The name alone—simply the name "Batrachites," the Greek for toad-stone—was sufficient to lead the fertile imagination of the mediaeval doctors to invent all the other particulars! It is a case precisely similar to that of the old lady who was credited with having vomited "three black crows." When the report was traced step by step to its source it was found that her nurse had stated that she vomited something as black as a crow!

The belief in the existence of a stone of magical properties in the head of the toad is only one of the many instances of beliefs of a closely similar kind which were accepted by Pliny (although he records no such belief as to the toad-stone), and were passed on from his treatise on natural history in a more or less muddled form to the middle ages, and so to our own time by later writers. Thus Pliny cites, as stones possessing magical properties, the "Bronte" found in the head of the tortoise, the Cinaedia in the head of a fish of that name, the Chelonites, a grass-green stone found in a swallow's belly, the Draconites, which must be cut out of the head of a live serpent, the Hyaenia from the eye of the Hyaena, and the Saurites from the bowels of a green lizard. All these and the Echites, or viper-stone, were credited with extraordinary magical virtues, and many of the assertions of later writers about the toad-stone are clearly due to their having calmly transferred the marvellous stories about other imaginary stones to the imaginary toad-stone. The only stone in the above list which has a real existence is that in the fish's head. Fish have a pair of beautiful translucent stones in their heads—the ear-stones or otoliths—by the laminated structure of which we can now determine the age of a fish just as a tree's age is told by the annual rings of growth in the wood of its stem. The fresh-water crayfish has a very curious pair of opaque stones (concretions of carbonate and phosphate of lime) formed in its gizzard as a normal and regular thing. They are familiar to every student who dissects a crayfish, and I am told that in Germany to-day, as in old times also, the "krebstein" is regarded by the country-folk as possessed of medicinal and magical properties. I am not able, on the present occasion, to trace out the possible origin of all the stories and beliefs about stones occurring within animals. They are more numerous than those cited by Pliny; they exist in every race and every civilization and refer to a large variety of animals. Probably many of these beliefs date from prehistoric times. In the East the most celebrated of these stones, since the period of Arabic civilisation, is called a bezoar-stone, "Bezoar" is the Persian word for "antidote," and does not apply only to a stone. The true and original "bezoar-stone" of the East is a concretion found in the intestine of the Persian wild goat. Those which I have seen are usually of the size and shape of a pigeon's egg and of a fine mahogany colour, with a smooth, polished surface. The Persian goat's bezoar-stone is found, on chemical analysis, to consist of "ellagic acid," an acid allied to gallic acid, the vegetable astringent product which occurs in oak-galls used until lately in the manufacture of ink. The bezoar-stone is probably a concretion formed in the intestine from some of the undigested portions of the goat's food. Such concretions are not uncommon, and occur even in man. "Bezoar-stones" are obtained in the East from deer, antelopes, and even monkeys, as well as goats, and must have a different chemical nature in each case. Minute scrapings from these stones are used in the East as medicine, and their chemical qualities render their use not altogether absurd, though they probably have not any really valuable action. It is probable that their use had a later origin than that of the "stones" connected with magic and witchcraft. Sixteenth century writers, ever ready to invent a history when their knowledge was defective, declared the bezoar-stone to be formed by the inspissated tears of the deer or of the gazelle—the "gum" which Hamlet remarked in aged examples of the human species.

The substance called "ambergris" (grey amber), valued to-day as a perfume, is a faecal concretion similar to a bezoar-stone. It is formed in the intestine of the sperm-whale, and contains fragments of the hard parts of cuttle-fishes, which are the food of these whales. "Hair-balls" are formed in the intestines of various large vegetarian animals—and occasionally stony concretions of various chemical composition are formed in the urinary bladder of various animals, as well as of man. The "eagle-stone" is also a concretion to which magical properties were ascribed. I have seen a specimen, but do not know its history and origin. Glass beads found in prehistoric burial-places are called by old writers "adders' eggs," and "adder-stones," and were said (it is improbable that one should say "believed") to hatch out young adders when incubated with sufficiently silly ceremonies and observances. A celebrated "stone" of medicinal reputation in the East is the "goa-stone." This is a purely artificial product—a mass of the size and shape of a large egg, consisting of some very fine and soft powder like fullers'-earth, sweetly scented, and overlaid with gold-leaf. A very little is rubbed off, mixed with water, and swallowed, as a remedy for many diseases. The deep connection of medicine with magic throwing light on the strange application of stones and hairs, bones and skins, by imaginative mankind, in all ages and places, is exhibited in the common practice of writing with ink a sentence of the Koran (or other sacred words) on a tablet, washing off the ink and making the patient swallow the water in which the sacred phrase has been thus dissolved! How convenient it would be were it possible thus to impart knowledge, virtue, and health to suffering humanity!

A good example of one of the ways in which magical properties become attributed to natural objects is the stone known as amethyst. The ancient Indian name of this stone had the sound represented by its present name. In Greek this sound happens to mean "not intoxicated"; hence, without more ado, the ancients declared that the amethyst was a preventive of, and a cure for, drunkenness.



CHAPTER VI

ELEPHANTS

In the novel by that clever but contradictious writer, Sam Butler, entitled "The Way of All Flesh," an amiable and philosophically minded old gentleman, who pervades the story, states that when one feels worried or depressed by the incidents of one's daily life, great comfort may be derived from an hour spent at the Zoological Gardens in company with the larger mammalia. He ascribes to them a remarkable soothing influence, and I am inclined to agree with him. I am not prepared to decide whether the effect is due to the example of patience under adversity offered by these animals, or whether it is perhaps their tranquil indifference to everything but food, coupled with their magnificent success in attaining to such dignity of size, which imposes upon me and fills me for a brief space with resignation and a child-like acquiescence in things as they are. The elephant stands first as a soothing influence, and then the giraffe, the latter having special powers, due to its beautiful eyes and agreeable perfume. Sometimes the hippopotamus may diffuse a charm of his own, an aura of rotund obesity, especially when he is bathing or sleeping; but there are moments when one has to flee from his presence. I never could get on very well with rhinoceroses, but the large deer, bison, and wild cattle have the quality detected by Mr. Butler. So has the gorgeous, well-grown tiger, in full measure, when he purrs in answer to one's voice: but the lion is pompous, irritable, and easily upset. He never purrs. He is unpleasantly and obscurely spotted. He seems to be afraid of losing his dignity, and to be conscious of the fact that his reputation—like that of some English officials—depends on the overpowering wig which he now wears, though his Macedonian forerunner had no such growth to give an illusive appearance of size and capacity to his head. However opinions may differ about these things, we will agree that the elephant (or "Oliphant," as he was called in France 400 years ago) is the most imposing, fascinating, and astonishing of all animals.



At the present day there are two species only of elephant existing on the earth's surface. These are the Indian (Fig. 6) (called Elephas indicus, but sometimes called Elephas maximus on account of the priority which belongs to that designation, although the Indian elephant is smaller than the other), and the African (Fig. 7) (called Elephas Africanus). In the wild state their area of occupation has become greatly diminished within historic times. The Indian elephant was hunted in Mesopotamia in the twelfth century B.C., and Egyptian drawings of the eighteenth dynasty show elephants of this species brought as tribute by Syrian vassals. To-day the Indian elephant is confined to certain forests of Hindoostan, Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. The African elephant extended 100 years ago all over South Africa, and in the days of the Carthaginians was found near the Mediterranean shore, whilst in prehistoric (late Pleistocene) times it existed in the south of Spain and in Sicily. Now it is confined to the more central and equatorial zone of Africa, and is yearly receding before the incursions and destructive attacks of civilised man.



At no great distance of time before the historic period, earlier, indeed, than the times of the herdsmen who used polished stone implements and raised great stone circles, namely, in the late Pleistocene period, we find that there existed all over Europe and North Asia and the northern part of America another elephant very closely allied to the Indian elephant, but having a bow-like outward curvature of the tusks, their points finally directed towards one another, and a thick growth of coarse hair all over the body. This is "the mammoth," the remains of which are found in every river valley in England, France and Germany, and of which whole carcases are frequently discovered in Northern Siberia, preserved from decay in the frozen river gravels and "silt." The ancient cave-men of France used the fresh tusks of the mammoth killed on the spot for their carvings and engravings, and from their time to this the ivory of the mammoth has been, and remains, in constant use. It is estimated that during the last two centuries at least 100 pairs of mammoths' tusks have been each year exported from the frozen lands of Siberia. In early mediaeval times the trade existed, and some ivory carvings and drinking horns of that age appear to be fashioned from this more ancient ivory.

Already, then, within the human period we find elephants closely similar to those of our own time, far more numerous and more widely distributed than in our own day, and happily established all over the temperate regions of the earth—even in our Thames Valley and in the forests where London now spreads its smoky brickwork. When we go further back in time—as the diggings and surveying of modern man enable us to do—we find other elephants of many different species, some differing greatly from the three species I have mentioned, and leading us back by gradual steps to a comparatively small animal, about the size of a donkey, without the wonderful trunk or the immense tusks of the later elephants. By the discovery and study of these earlier forms we have within the last ten years arrived at a knowledge of the steps by which the elephant acquired in the course of long ages (millions of years) his "proboscis" (as the Greeks first called it), and I will later sketch that history.

But now let us first of all note some of the peculiarities of living elephants and the points by which the two kinds differ from one another. The most striking fact about the elephant is its enormous size. It is only exceeded among living animals by whales; it is far larger than the biggest bull, or rhinoceros, or hippopotamus. A fair-sized Indian elephant weighs two to three tons (Jumbo, one of the African species, weighed five), and requires as food 60 lb. of oats, 1-1/2 truss of hay, 1-1/2 truss of corn a day, costing together in this country about 5s.; whereas a large cart-horse weighs 15 cwt., and requires weekly three trusses of hay and 80 lb. of oats, costing together 12s. or about 1s. 8-1/2d. a day. It is this which has proved fatal to the elephant since man took charge of the world. The elephant requires so much food and takes so many years in growing up (twenty or more before he is old enough to be put to work), that it is only in countries where there is a super-abundance of forest in which he can be allowed to grow to maturity at his own "charges" (so to speak) that it is worth while to attempt to domesticate and make use of him. For most purposes three horses are more "handy" than one elephant. The elephant is caught when he is already grown up, and then trained. It is as a matter of economy that he is not bred in confinement, and not because there is any insuperable difficulty in the matter. Occasionally elephants have bred in menageries.

There is no doubt that the African elephant at the present day grows to a larger size than the Indian, though it was the opinion of the Romans of the Empire that the Indian elephant was the more powerful, courageous, and intelligent of the two. It seems next to impossible to acquire at the present day either specimens or trustworthy records of the largest Indian elephants. About 10 ft. 6 ins. at the shoulder seems to be the maximum, though they are dressed up by their native owners with platforms and coverings to make them look bigger. In India the skin of domesticated individuals is polished and carefully stained, like an old boot, by the assiduity of their guardians, so that a museum specimen of exceptional size, fit for exhibition and study, cannot be obtained. On the other hand, the African elephant not unfrequently exceeds a height of 11 ft. at the shoulder. With some trouble I obtained one exceeding this measurement direct from East Africa for the Natural History Museum, where it now stands. It seems highly probable that this species occasionally exceeds 12 ft. in height. On the ground, between the great African elephant's fore and hind legs, in the museum, I placed a stuffed specimen of the smallest terrestrial mammal—the pigmy shrew-mouse. It is worth while thus calling to mind that the little animal has practically every separate bone, muscle, blood-vessel, nerve, and other structure present in the huge monster compared with it—is, in fact, built closely upon the same plan, and yet is so much smaller that it is impossible to measure one by the other. The mouse is only about one fifth the length of the elephant's eye. According to ancient Oriental fable, the mouse and the dragon were the only two animals of which the elephant was afraid.

The African elephant has much larger tusks relatively to his size than the Indian, and both males and females have them, whereas the Indian female has none. A very fine Indian elephant's tusk weighs from 75 lb. to 80 lb. The record for an African elephant's tusk was (according to standard books) 180 lb. But I obtained ten years ago for the museum, where it now may be seen, an African elephant's tusk weighing 228-1/2 lb. Its fellow weighed a couple of pounds less. It measures 10 ft. 2 in. in length along the curvature. This tusk was recognised by Sir Henry Stanley's companion, Mr. Jephson, when he was with me in the museum, as actually one which he had last seen in the centre of Africa. He told me that he had, in fact, weighed and measured this tusk in the treasury of Emin Pasha, in Central Africa, when he went with Stanley to bring Emin down to the coast. As will be remembered, Emin had no wish to go to the coast, but returned to his province. He was subsequently attacked and murdered by an Arab chief, who appropriated his store of ivory, and in the course of time had it conveyed to the ivory market at Zanzibar. The date of the purchase there of the museum specimen corresponds with the history given by Mr. Jephson.



The African elephant (as could be seen by comparing the small one living in Regent's Park with its neighbours) has a sloping forehead graduating into the trunk or proboscis, instead of the broad, upright brow of the Indian. He also has very much larger ears, which lie against the shoulders (except when he is greatly excited) like a short cape or cloak (see Fig. 7). These great ears differ somewhat in shape in the elephants of different parts of Africa, and local races can be distinguished by the longer or shorter angle into which the flap is drawn out. The grinding teeth of the two elephants differ very markedly, but one must see these in a museum. The grinders are very large and long (from behind forwards), coming into place one after the other. Each grinder occupies, when fully in position, the greater part of one side of the upper or of the lower jaw. They are crossed from right to left by ridges of enamel, like a series of mountains and valleys, which gradually wear down by rubbing against those of the tooth above or below. The biggest grinder of the Indian elephant has twenty-four of these transverse ridges, whilst that of the African has only eleven, which are therefore wider apart (see Fig. 8). An extinct kind of elephant—the mastodon—had only five such ridges on its biggest grinders, and four or only three on the others. Other ancestral elephants had quite ordinary-looking grinders, with only two or three irregular ridges or broad tubercles. Both the Indian and African elephant have hairless, rough, very hard, wrinkled skins. But the new-born young are covered with hair, and some Indian elephants living in cold, mountainous regions appear to retain a certain amount of hair through life. The mammoth (which agreed with the Indian elephant in the number of ridges on its grinders and in other points) lived in quite cold, sub-Arctic conditions, at a time when glaciers completely covered Scandinavia and the north of our islands as well as most of Germany. It retained a complete coat of coarse hair throughout life. The young of our surviving elephants only exhibit transitorily the family tendency.

The last mammoth probably disappeared from the area which is now Great Britain about 150,000 years ago. It might be supposed that no elephant was seen in England again until the creation of "menageries" and "zoological gardens" within the last two or three hundred years. This, however, is by no means the case. The Italians in the middle ages, and through them the French and the rulers of Central Europe, kept menageries and received as presents, or in connection with their trade with the East and their relations with Eastern rulers, frequent specimens of strange beasts from distant lands. Our King Henry I, had a menagerie at Woodstock, where he kept a porcupine, lions, leopards, and a camel! The Emperor Charlemagne received in 803 A.D. from Haroun al Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad, an elephant named Abulabaz. It was brought to Aix-la-Chapelle by Isaac the Jew, and died suddenly in 810. Some four and a half centuries later (in 1257), Louis IX, of France, returning from the Holy Land, sent as a special and magnificent present to Henry III, King of England (according to the chronicle of Matthew Paris), an elephant which was exhibited at the Tower of London. It was supposed by the chronicler to be the first ever brought to England, and indeed the first to be taken beyond Italy, for he did not know of Charlemagne's specimen. In 1591 King Henry IV of France, wishing to be very polite to Queen Elizabeth of England, and apparently rather troubled by the expense of keeping the beast himself, sent to her, having heard that she would like to have it, an elephant which had been brought from the "Indies" and landed at Dieppe. He declared it to be the first which had ever come into France, but presented it to Her Majesty "as I would most willingly present anything more excellent did I possess it." Thenceforward elephants were from time to time exhibited at the Tower, together with lions and other strange beasts acquired by the Crown.

None of these elephants were, however, "the first who ever burst" into remote Britain after the mammoths had disappeared, and we were separated from Europe by the geological changes which gave us the English Channel—La Manche. Though Julius Caesar himself does not mention it, it is definitely stated by a writer on strategy named Polyaenus, a friend of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but not, I am sorry to say, an authority to whose statements historians attach any serious value—that Caesar made use of an elephant armed with iron plates and carrying on its back a tower full of armed men to terrify the ancient Britons when he crossed the Thames—an operation which he carried out, I believe, somewhere between Molesey and Staines.

Elephants are often spoken of as "Ungulates," and classed by naturalists with the hoofed animals (the odd toed tapirs, rhinoceroses, and horses, and the even-toed pigs, camel, cattle, and deer). But there is not much to say in defence of such an association. The elephants have, as a matter of fact, not got hoofs, and they have five toes on each foot. The five toes of the front foot have each a nail, whilst usually only four toes of the hind foot have nails. A speciality of the elephant is the great circular pad of thick skin overlying fat and fibrous tissue, which forms the sole of the foot and bears the animal's enormous weight. This buffer-like development of the foot existed in some great extinct mammals (the Dinoceras family, of North America), but is altogether different from the support given by a horse's hoof or the paired shoe-like hoofs of great cattle or the three rather elegant hoofed toes of the rhinoceros.

The Indian elephant likes good, solid ground to walk on, and when he finds himself in a boggy place will seize any large objects (preferably big branches of trees) and throw them under his feet to prevent himself sinking in. Occasionally he will remove the stranger who is riding on his back and make use of him in this way. The circumference of the African elephant's fore-foot is found by hunters to be half the animal's height at the shoulder, and is regarded as furnishing a trustworthy indication of his stature.

The legs of the elephant differ from those of more familiar large animals in the fact that the ankle and the wrist (the so-called knee of the horse's foreleg) are not far above the sole of the foot (resembling man's joints in this respect), whilst the true knee-joint (called "the stifle" in horses)—instead of being, as in horses, high up, close against the body, strongly flexed even when at rest, and obscured by the skin—is far below the body, free and obvious enough. In fact, the elephant keeps the thigh and the upper arm perpendicular and in line with the lower segment of the limb when he is standing, so that the legs are pillar-like. But he bends the joints amply when in quick movement. The hind legs seen in action resemble, in the proportions of thigh, foreleg, and foot, and the bending at the knee and ankle, very closely those of a man walking on "all fours." The elephant as known in Europe more than 300 years ago was rarely seen in free movement. He was kept chained up in his stall, resting on his straight, pillar-like legs and their pad-like feet. And with that curious avidity for the marvellous which characterized serious writers in those days to the exclusion of any desire or attempt to ascertain the truth, it was coolly asserted, and then commonly believed, that the elephant could not bend his legs. Shakespeare—who, of course, is merely using a common belief of his time as a chance illustration of human character—makes Ulysses say (referring to his own stiffness of carriage) ("Troilus and Cressida," Act II) "The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure." An old writer says: "The elephant hath no joints, and, being unable to lye down, it lieth against a tree, which, the hunters observing, do saw almost asunder; whereon the beast relying—by the fall of the tree falls also down itself, and is able to rise no more." Another old writer (Bartholomew, 1485), says, more correctly: "When the elephant sitteth he bendeth his feet; he bendeth the hinder legs right as a man."

A writer of 120 years later in date (Topsell) says: "In the River Ganges there are blue worms of sixty cubits long having two arms; these when the elephants come to drink in that river take their trunks in their hands and pull them off. At the sight of a beautiful woman elephants leave off all rage and grow meek and gentle. In Africa there are certain springs of water which, if at any time they dry up, they are opened and recovered again by the teeth of elephants." The blue worm of the Ganges referred to is no doubt the crocodile; both in India and Africa animals coming to the rivers to drink are seized by lurking crocodiles, who fix their powerful jaws on to the face (snout or muzzle) of the drinking animal and drag it under the water. Thus the fable has arisen of the origin of the elephant's trunk as recounted by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. A young elephant (before the days of trunks), according to this authority, when drinking at a riverside had his moderate and well-shaped snout seized by a crocodile. The little elephant pulled and the crocodile pulled, and by the help of a friendly python the elephant got the best of it. He extricated himself from the jaws of death. But, oh! what a difference in his appearance! His snout was drawn out so as to form that wonderful elongated thing with two nostrils at the end which we call the elephant's trunk, and was henceforth transmitted (a first-rate example of an "acquired character") to future generations! The real origin of the elephant's trunk is (as I will explain later) a different one from that handed down to us in the delightful jungle-book. I do not believe in the hereditary transmission of acquired modifications!

Topsell may or may not be right as to the result produced on elephants by the sight of a beautiful woman. In Africa the experiment would be a difficult one, and even in India inconclusive. Topsell seems, however, to have come across correct information about the digging for water by an African elephant by the use of his great tusks—those tusks for the gain of which he is now being rapidly exterminated by man. Serious drought is frequent in Africa, and a cause of death to thousands of animals. African elephants, working in company, are known to have excavated holes in dried-up river beds to the depth of 25 feet in a single night in search of water. It is probable that the Indian elephant's tusk would not be of service in such digging, and it is to be noted that he is rather an inhabitant of high ground and table-lands than of tropical plains liable to flood and to drought. The tusk of the Indian elephant has become merely a weapon of attack for the male, and there are even local breeds in which it is absent in the males as well as in the females. The mammoth was a near cousin of the Indian elephant, and inhabited cold uplands and the fringes of sub-Arctic forests, on which he fed. His tusks were very large, and curved first outward and then inward at the tips. They would not have served for heavy digging, and probably were used for forcing a way through the forest and as a protection to the face and trunk.

The trunk of the elephant was called "a hand" by old writers, and it seems to have acted in the development of the elephant's intelligence in the same way as man's hand has in regard to his mental growth, though in a less degree. The Indian elephant has a single tactile and grasping projection (sometimes called "a finger") placed above between the two nostrils at the end of the trunk; the African elephant has one above and one below. I have seen the elephant pick up with this wonderful trunk with equal facility a heavy man and then a threepenny piece.

The intelligence of the elephant is sometimes exaggerated by reports and stories; sometimes it is not sufficiently appreciated. It is not fair to compare the intelligence of the elephant with that of the dog—bred and trained by man for thousands of years. So far as one can judge, there is no wild animal, excepting the higher apes, which exhibits so much and such varied intelligence as the elephant. It appears that from early tertiary times (late Eocene) the ancestors of elephants have had large brains, whilst, when we go back so far as this, the ancestors of nearly all other animals had brains a quarter of the size (and even less in proportion to body-size) which their modern representatives have. Probably the early possession of a large brain at a geological period when brains were as a rule small is what has enabled the elephants not only to survive until to-day, but to spread over the whole world (except Australia), and to develop an immense variety and number of individuals throughout the tertiary series in spite of their ungainly size. It is only the yet bigger brain of man which (would it were not so!) is now at last driving this lovable giant, this vast compound of sagacity and strength, out of existence. The elephant—like man standing on his hind legs—has a wide survey of things around him owing to his height. He can take time to allow of cerebral intervention in his actions since he is so large that he has little cause to be afraid and to hurry. He has a fine and delicate exploring organ in his trunk, with its hand-like termination; with this he can, and does, experiment and builds up his individual knowledge and experience. Elephants act together in the wild state, aiding one another to uproot trees too large for one to deal with alone. They readily understand and accept the guidance of man, and with very small persuasion and teaching execute very dextrous work—such as the piling of timber. If man had selected the more intelligent elephants for breeding over a space of a couple of thousand years a prodigy of animal intelligence would have resulted. But man has never "bred" the elephant at all.

The Greeks and Romans knew ivory first, and then became acquainted with the elephant. The island of Elephantina in the Nile was from the earliest times a seat of trade in the ivory tusks of the African elephant, and so acquired its name. Herodotus is the first to mention the elephant itself; Homer only refers to the ivory by the word "elephas." Aristotle in this, as in other matters, is more correct than later writers. He probably received first-hand information about the elephant from Alexander and some of his men after their Indian expedition. The Romans had an unpleasant first personal experience of elephants when Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, landed a number with his army and put the Roman soldiers to flight. But the Romans then, and continually in after-times, showed their cool heads and sound judgment in a certain contempt for elephants as engines of war. They soon learned to dig pits on the battlefield to entrap the great beasts, and they deliberately made for the elephants' trunks, hewing them through with their swords, so that the agonised and maddened creatures turned round and trampled down the troops of their own side. The Romans only used them subsequently to terrify barbaric people, and as features in military processions. But Eastern nations used them extensively in war. In A.D. 217 Antiochus the Great brought 217 elephants in his army against 73 employed by Ptolemy, at what was called "the Battle of the Elephants." The battle commenced by the charging head to head of the opposing elephants and the discharge of arrows, spears and stones by the men in the towers on their backs.

An interesting question has been raised as to whether the elephants used by the Carthaginians were the African species or the Indian. There is no doubt that the elephants of Pyrrhus and those known to Alexander were the Indian, though they were taken in those days much to the West of India, namely, in Mesopotamia, and it would not have been difficult for the Carthaginians to convey Indian elephants, which had certainly been brought as far as Egypt, along the Mediterranean coast. An unfounded prejudice as to the want of docility of the African elephant has favoured the notion that the Carthaginians used the Indian elephant. As a matter of fact, no one in modern times has tried to train the African elephant, except here and there in a zoological garden. Probably the Indian "mahout," or elephant trainer could, if he were put to it, do as much with an African as he does with an Indian elephant. It would be an interesting experiment. In the next place, there is decisive evidence that it was the African elephant which the Carthaginians used, since we have a Carthaginian coin (Fig. 7) on which is beautifully represented—in unmistakable modelling—the African elephant, with his large triangular cape-like ears and his sloping forehead. In the time of Hannibal there were stables for over 300 of these elephants at Carthage, and he took fifty with him to the South of France with his army for the Italian invasion. He only got thirty-seven safely over the Rhone, and all but a dozen or so died in the terrible passage of the Alps. After the battle of Trebia he had only eight left, and when he had crossed the Apennines there was only one still alive. On this Hannibal himself rode.

Since the period when the white chalk which now forms our cliffs and hills was deposited at the bottom of a vast and deep ocean—the sea bottom has been raised, the chalk has emerged and risen on the top of hills to 800 feet in height in our own islands, and to ten times that height elsewhere, and during that process sands and clays and shelly gravels have been deposited to the thickness of some 2,800 feet by seas and estuaries and lakes, which have come and gone on the face of Europe and of other parts of the world as it has slowly sunk and slowly risen again. The last 200 feet or so of deposits we call the Pleistocene or Quaternary; the rest are known as the Tertiary strata. They are only a small part of the total thickness of aqueous deposit of stratified rock—which amounts to 60,000 feet more before the earliest remains of life in the Cambrian beds are reached, whilst older than, and therefore below this, we have another 50,000 feet of water-made rock which yields no fossils—no remains of living things, though living things were certainly there! Our little layer of Tertiary strata on the top is, however, very important. It took several million years in forming, although it is only one-fortieth of the whole thickness of aqueous deposit on the crust of the earth. We divide it into Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene, and each of these into upper, middle, and lower, the Eocene being the oldest. Our London clay and Woolwich sands are lower Eocene; there is a good deal of Miocene in Switzerland and Germany, whilst the Pliocene is represented by whole provinces of Italy, parts of central France, and by the White and Red "crags" of Suffolk.[5]



It is during this Tertiary period that the mammals—the warm-blooded, hairy quadrupeds, which suckle their young—have developed (they had come into existence a good deal earlier), and we find the remains of ancestral forms of the living kinds of cattle, pigs, horses, rhinoceroses, tapirs, elephants, lions, wolves, bears, etc., embedded in the successive layers of Tertiary deposits. Naturally enough, those most like the present animals are found in late Pliocene, and those which are close to the common ancestors of many of the later kinds are found in the Eocene, whilst we also find, at various levels of the Tertiary deposit, remains of side-branches of the mammalian pedigree, which, though including very powerful and remarkable beasts, have left no line of descent to represent them at the present day. We have been able to trace the great modern one-toed horses, zebras, and asses, with their complicated pattern of grinding-teeth back by quite gradual steps (represented by the bones and teeth of fossil kinds of horses), to smaller three-toed animals with simpler tuberculated teeth, and even, without any marked break in the series, to a small Eocene animal (not bigger than a spaniel) with four equal-sized toes on its front foot, and three on its hind foot. We know, too, a less direct series of intermediate forms leading beyond this to an animal with five toes on each foot and "typical" teeth. In fact, no one doubts that (leaving aside a few difficult and doubtful cases) all such big existing mammals, as I mentioned above, as well as monkeys and man, are derived from small mammals—intermediate in most ways between a hedgehog and a pig—which flourished in very early Eocene times, and had five toes on each foot, and "a typical dentition." Even the elephants came from such a small ancestral form. The common notion that the extinct forerunners of existing animals were much bigger than recent kinds, and even gigantic, is not in accordance with fact. Some extinct animals were of very great size—especially the great reptiles of the period long before the Tertiaries, and before the chalk. But the recent horse, the recent elephant, the giraffe, the lions, bears, and others, are bigger—some much bigger—than the ancestral forms, to which we can trace them by the wonderfully preserved and wonderfully collected and worked-out fossilised bones discovered in the successive layers of the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene strata, leading us as we descend to more primitive, simplified, and smaller ancestors.

It is easy to understand the initial character of the foot of the early ancestral mammals. It had five toes. By the suppression or atrophy of first the innermost toe, then of the outermost, you find that mammals may first acquire four toes only, and then only three, and by repeating the process the toes may be reduced to two, or right away to one, the original middle toe. There is no special difficulty about tracing back the elephants in so far as this matter is concerned, since they have kept (like man and some other mammals) the full typical complement of five toes on each foot.

But I must explain a little more at length what was the "typical dentition,"—that is to say, the exact number and form of the teeth in each half of the upper and the lower jaw of the early mammalian ancestor of lower Eocene times, or just before. The jaws were drawn out into a snout or muzzle, an elongated, protruding "face," as in a dog or deer or hedgehog, and there were numerous teeth set in a row along the gums of the upper and the lower jaw. The teeth were the same in number, in upper and in lower jaw, and so formed as to work together, those of the lower jaw shutting as a rule just a little in front of the corresponding teeth of the upper jaw. There were above and below, in front, six small chisel-like teeth, which we call "the incisors." At the corner of the mouth above and below on each side flanking these was a corner tooth, or dog-tooth, a little bigger than the incisors, and more pointed and projecting. These we call "the canines," four in all. Then we turn the corner of the mouth-front, as it were, and come to the "grinders," cheek-teeth or molars. These are placed in a row along each half of upper and lower jaw. In our early mammalian ancestor they were seven in number, with broader crowns than the peg-like incisors and canines, the bright polished enamel of the crown being raised up into two, three or four cone-like prominences. The back grinders are broader and bigger than those nearer the dog-tooth. The three hindermost grinders in each half of each jaw are not replaced by "second" teeth, whilst all the other teeth are.

[Illustration: Fig. 10.—The teeth in the upper and lower jaw-bone of the common pig—drawn from photographs. A and B represent the right half of the lower jaw (A) and the right half of the upper jaw (B) seen in horizontal position. Inc. are the incisors or chisel-like front teeth, three in number, in each half of each jaw and marked 1, 2, 3. C marks the canine or dog-tooth, which here grows to be a large tusk. The molars, "grinders," or cheek teeth are marked 1 to 7. Figs. C and D give a side view of the left halves of the upper (C) and of the lower jaw-bone (D), with the teeth in place. The bone has been partly cut away so as to show the fangs or roots of the teeth, which are double in the molars, and even threefold in molar No. 7. The explanation of the lettering is the same as that given for Figs. A and B. The letter p in Fig. B points to a "foramen" or hole in the upper jaw-bone. These drawings are introduced here as showing the complete number of teeth which the ancestor of pigs, goats, elephants, dogs, tigers, men, and even whales possessed. The reduction in number and the alteration in the shape of the primitive full set of teeth is referred to in the present chapter on "Elephants," and in those on "Vegetarians and their Teeth" (p. 102), and on "A Strange Extinct Beast" (p. 92).]

Now this typical set of teeth—consisting of twenty-eight grinders, four canines, and twelve incisors—is not found complete in many mammals at the present day, though it is found more frequently as we go back to earlier strata.[6] Though some mammals have kept close to the original number, they have developed peculiar shape and qualities in some of the teeth as well as changes in size. The common pig still keeps the typical number (Fig. 10), but he has developed the corner teeth or canines into enormous tusks both in the upper and lower jaw, and the more anterior grinders have become quite minute. The cats (lions and tigers included) have kept the full number of incisors (see Figs. 21 and 22, pp. 103, 104); they have developed the four canines into enormous and deadly stabbing "fangs," and they have lost all the grinders but three in each half of the lower jaw and four in each half of the upper jaw (twelve instead of twenty-eight), and these have become sharp-edged so as to be scissor-like in their action, instead of crushing or grinding. Man and the old-world monkeys have lost an incisor in each half of each jaw (see Pls. VI and VII); they retain the canines, but have only five molars in each half of each jaw (twenty in all instead of twenty-eight). Most of the mammals—whatever change of number and shape has befallen their teeth in adaptation to their different requirements as to the kind of food and mode of getting it—have retained a good long pair of jaws and a snout or muzzle consisting of nose, upper jaw, and lower jaw, projecting well in front of the eyes and brain-case. Man is remarkable as an exception. In the higher races of men the jaws are shorter than in the lower races, and project but very little beyond the vertical plane of the eyes, whilst the nose projects beyond the lips. Another exception is the elephant. This is most obvious when the prepared bony skull and lower jaw are examined, but can be sufficiently clearly seen in the living animal. The lower jaw and the part of the upper jaw against which it and its grinders play is extraordinarily short and small. The elephant has, in fact, no projecting bony jaw at all, no bony snout, its chin does not project more than that of an old man, and even the part of the upper jaw into which its great tusks are set does not bend forward far from the perpendicular (Fig. 9).



The elephant (see Fig. 9) has no sign of the six little front teeth (incisors) above and below which we find in the typical dentition and in many living mammals, nor of the corner teeth (dog-teeth, or canines). In the upper jaw in front there is the one huge tusk on each side, and in the lower jaw no front teeth at all! Then as to the grinders. In the elephant these are enormous, with many transverse ridges on the elongated crown, and so big that there is only room for one at a time in each half of upper and lower jaw. Six of these succeed one another in each half of each jaw, and correspond (though greatly altered) to six of the seven grinders of the typical dentition. Are there amongst older fossil elephants and animals like elephants any which have an intermediate condition of the teeth, connecting the extremely peculiar teeth of the modern elephants with the typical dentition such as is approached by the pig, the dog, the tapir, and the hedgehog? There are such links. We know a great many elephants from Pleistocene and Pliocene strata—some from European localities, more from India, and some from America. A little elephant not more than 3 feet high when adult is found fossil in the island of Malta; other species were a little larger than the living African elephant. Whilst the Indian elephant has as many as twenty-four cross-ridges on its biggest grinding tooth (Fig. 8) there is a fossil kind which has only six such ridges. But besides true elephants we know from the Pliocene, Miocene, and Upper Eocene of the old world, the remains of elephant-like creatures (some as big as true elephants), which are distinguished by the name "Mastodon" (Fig. 11). And, in fact, we are conducted through a series of changes of form by ancient elephant-like creatures which are of older and older date as we pass along the series, and are known as (1) Mastodon, (2) Tetrabelodon, (3) Palaeomastodon, (4) Meritherium, until we come to something approaching the general form of skull and skeleton and the typical dentition of the early mammalian ancestor. Mastodons of several species are found in Pliocene strata in Europe and Asia; detached teeth are found in Suffolk. One species actually survived (why, we do not know) in North America into the early human period, and whole skeletons of it are dug out from the morasses such as that of "Big-bone Lick." The Mastodons had a longer jaw and face than the elephants, though closely allied to them. They bring one nearer to ordinary mammals in that fact, and also in having (when young) two front teeth or incisors in the lower jaw. Their grinders had the crowns less elongated than those of the elephants, and there were only five cross-ridges—on the biggest—and these ridges tend to divide into separate cones (Fig. 8). So here, too, we are approaching the ordinary mammals, of which we may keep the pig and the tapir in mind as samples. But the Mastodons still had the great trunk and huge tusks of the elephants.

Next we must look at Tetrabelodon (Fig. 12), and it is this creature which has really revealed the history of the strange metamorphosis by which elephants were produced. The Tetrabelodon is known as "the long-jawed mastodon," because, as was shown in a wonderfully well-preserved skeleton from the lower Pliocene of the centre of France, set up in the Paris Museum, it had a lower jaw of enormous length, ending in two large horizontally directed teeth (Fig. 12). Instead of a lower jaw a foot long, as in an elephant or in the common kind of mastodon—this long-jawed kind had a lower jaw 5 feet or 6 feet long! The tusks of the upper jaw were large, and nearly horizontal in direction, bent downwards a little on each side of the long lower jaw. This lower jaw seemed incomprehensible, almost a monstrosity—until it occurred to me that it exactly corresponds to the elongated upper lip and nose which we call the elephant's trunk—and that the trunk of "Tetrabelodon" must have rested on his long lower jaw. In descending to Tetrabelodon we leave behind us the elephants with hanging unsupported trunk; the lower jaw here is of sufficient length to support the great trunk. When the lower jaw shortened in the later mastodons and elephants the trunk did not shorten too, but remained free and depending, capable of large movement and of grasping with its extremity. Photographs, casts, and actual specimens of the extraordinary skull of the long-jawed mastodon or Tetrabelodon and of the creatures mentioned below may be seen in the Natural History Museum.

Lastly we have the wonderful series of discoveries made about twelve years ago by Dr. Andrews (of the Natural History Museum) of elephant-like creatures in the upper Eocene of the Fayoum Desert of Egypt. Palaeomastodon (the name given by Dr. Andrews to one of them) is a "pig-like" mastodon, with an elongated, bony face, the tusks of moderate size, and the lower jaw not projecting more than a few inches beyond them, so that the proboscis is quite short and rests well on it (Fig. 13). This animal had six moderate sized grinders (molars or cheek-teeth) on each side of each jaw in position simultaneously, as may be seen in the complete skull shown in Fig. 14. Of other teeth it had only the two moderate-sized front tusks above and two very big, chisel-like "incisors" in the front of the lower jaw. Exactly how these were used and for what food no one has yet made out.



The remains, which finally bring the elephants into line with the ordinary mammals with typical dentition, were discovered also by Dr. Andrews and named "Meritherium" by him, signifying "the beast of the Lake Meris." This creature is not bigger than a tapir, and had the shape of head and face which we see in that and the ordinary hoofed animals (Fig. 15). It had no trunk, and whilst it had six small and simplified mastodon-like grinders in each half of each jaw, it had six incisors in the upper jaw and a canine or corner tooth on each side. In the lower jaw there were only two large incisors besides the cheek-teeth or grinders. Not the least interesting point about Meritherium is that it tells us which of the front upper teeth have become the huge tusks of the later elephants. Counting from the middle line there are in Meritherium three incisors right and three left. The second of these upper teeth on each side is much larger than the others. It is this (seen in Fig. 15) which has grown larger and larger in later descendants of this primitive form and become the elephant's tusk, whilst all the others have disappeared.



We now know the complete series of steps connecting elephants with ordinary trunkless, tuskless mammals. The transition from the "beast of Meris" on the one hand to the common typidentate mammalian ancestor, and on the other hand to the elephants, is easy, and requires no effort of the imagination. His short muzzle (upper and lower jaw), first elongated step by step to a considerable length, giving us Palaeomastodon (Fig. 13). Then the lower jaw shrunk and became shorter than it was at the start, and the rest of the muzzle (the front part of the upper jaw, carrying with it the nostrils), drooped and became the mobile muscular elephant's trunk!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: I am inclined to think that the line between Pliocene and Pleistocene or Quaternary ought, in this country, to be drawn between the White and Red Crag of Suffolk. Glacial conditions set in and were recurrent from the commencement of the Red Crag deposit onwards.]

[Footnote 6: Mammals having the number and form of teeth which I have just described as typical—or such modification of it as can easily be produced by suppression of some teeth and enlargement of others—are called Typidentata. On the other hand, the whales, the sloths, ant-eaters, and armadilloes, as also the Marsupials, are called Variodentata, because we cannot derive their teeth from those of the Typidentate ancestor. They form lines of descent which separated from the other mammals before the Typidentate ancestor of all, except the groups just named, was evolved.]



CHAPTER VII

A STRANGE EXTINCT BEAST

The terraces of gravel deposited by existing rivers and the deposits in caverns in the limestone regions of Western Europe—the so-called "Pleistocene" strata—contain, besides the flint weapons of man and rare specimens of his bones, the remains of animals which are either identical with those living at the present day (though many of them are not living now in Europe) or of animals very closely similar to living species. Thus we find the bones of horses like the wild horse of Mongolia, of the great bull (the Urus of Caesar), of the bison, of deer and goats, of the Siberian big-nosed antelope, of the musk-ox (now living within the Arctic circle), of the wild boar, of the hippopotamus (like that of the Nile), and of lions, hyenas, bears, and wolves. The most noteworthy of the animals like to, but not identical with, any living species are the mammoth, which is very close to the Indian elephant, but has a hairy coat; the hairy rhinoceros, like, but not quite the same as, the African square-mouthed rhinoceros; and the great Irish deer, which is like a giant fallow-deer. These three animals are really extinct kinds or species, but are not very far from living kinds. In fact, the most recent geological deposits do not contain any animals so peculiar, when compared with living animals, as to necessitate a wide separation of the fossil animal from living "congeners" by the naturalist who classifies animals and tries to exhibit their degrees of likeness and relationship to one another by the names he adopts for them. The mammoth is a distinct "species" of elephant. It requires, it is true, a "specific" or "second" name of its own; but it belongs to the genus elephant. Hence we call it Elephas primigenius, whilst the living Indian elephant is Elephas Indicus. The reader is referred to the preceding chapter for further notes about elephants.

The strata next below the Pleistocene gravels and cave deposits are ascribed to the "Pliocene age"—older than these are the "Miocene" and the "Eocene," and then you come to the Chalk, a good white landmark separating newer from older strata.

We know now in great detail the skeletons and jaws of some hundreds of kinds of extinct animals of very different groups found in the Eocene, the Miocene, the Pliocene, and the Pleistocene layers of clays, sands, and gravels of this part of the world. Nothing very strange or unlike what is now living is found in the Pleistocene—the latest deposits—but when we go further back strange creatures are discovered, becoming stranger and less like living things as we pass through Pliocene to Miocene, and on—downwards in layers, backwards in time—to the Eocene.