Curious Creatures in Zoology. Ashton John

King himself full sparingly would dine.

      No Drinks were used that did of Honey bost,

      Beer was their common Liquor, Ceres owest,

      They fed on Meats were little boyl’d, no rost.

      Each Table was with Meats but meanly drest,

      Few Dishes on’t, Antiquity thought best;

      And in plain Fare each held himself most blest.

      There were no Flagons, nor broad Bowls in use,

      Nor painted Dishes grown to great abuse,

      Each, at the Tap, did fill his wooden cruze.

      No man, admirer of the former days,

      Did use Tankards or Oxeys;21 for their ways

      Were sparing, almost empty Dishes this bewrays.

      No Silver Basons, or guilt Cups were thought

      Fit by the Host, and to the table brought,

      To garnish, or by Ghests were vainly sought.”

      By precept, and example, he induced many to Temperance and Sobriety – but, in spite of his moderation in food and drink, he was a most outrageous pirate, and Berserker.

      At last, however, old, and weary of life, he sought death, and meeting Hatherus, son of a noble whom he had killed, begged him as a favour to cut his head off – and the young man, obligingly consenting, his head was severed from his body, and literally bit the ground. There are records of many more Northern giants, but none of so edifying a life as Starchaterus.

      Giants are plentiful in the Bible, the Emins, Anakims, and the Zamzummims: there was Og, King of Bashan, whose iron bedstead was 9 cubits long by 4 broad —i. e., 13 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. That redoubtable champion of the Philistines, Goliath of Gath, was six cubits and a span high —i. e., 9 ft. 9 in. In 2 Samuel xxi. 15–22, we find mention made of many giants.

      “15 Moreover the Philistines had yet war again with Israel; and David went down, and his servants with him, and fought against the Philistines; and David waxed faint.

      “16 And Ishbi-benob, which was of the sons of the giants, the weight of whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David.

      “17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah succoured him, and smote the Philistine, and killed him…

      “18 And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob: then Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph, which was of the sons of the giant.

      “19 And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

      “20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.

      “21 And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David, slew him.

      “22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.”

      But these were mere pigmies if we can believe M. Henrion, who in 1718 calculated out the heights of divers notable persons – thus he found Adam was 121 ft. 9 in. high, Eve 118 ft. 9 in., Noah 27 ft., Abraham 20 ft., and Moses 13 ft.

      Putting aside the mythical classical giants, Pliny says: “The tallest man that has been seen in our times, was one Gabbaras by name, who was brought from Arabia by the Emperor Claudius; his height was nine feet and as many inches. In the reign of Augustus, there were two persons, Posio and Secundilla, by name, who were half a foot taller than him; their bodies have been preserved as objects of curiosity in the Museum of the Sallustian family.”

      But it is reserved to Sir John Mandeville to have found the tallest giants of, comparatively speaking, modern times. “And beyond that valey is a great yle, where people as great as giaunts of xxviii fote long, and they have no clothinge but beasts skyns that hang on them, and they eate no bread, but flesh raw, and drink milke, and they have no houses, & they ate gladlyer fleshe of men, than other, & men saye to us that beyonde that yle is an yle where are greater giaunts as xlv or l fote long, & some said l cubits long (75 feet) but I saw them not, and among those giaunts are great shepe, and they beare great wolle, these shepe have I sene many times.”

      Early Men

      On the antiquity of man it is impossible to speculate, because we have no data to go upon. We know that his earliest existence, of which we have any cognisance, must have been at a period when the climate and fauna of the Western continent was totally different to their present state. Then roamed over the land, the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, the Bos-primigenius, the reindeer, the cave bear, the brown and the Arctic bears, the cave hyæna, and many other animals now quite extinct. We know that man then existed, because we find his handiwork in the shape of manufactured flint implements, mixed with the bones of these animals – and, occasionally, with them human remains have been found, but, as yet, no perfect skull has been found. There were two types of man, the Dolicho Cephalous, or long-headed, and the Brachy Cephalous, or round-headed – and, of these, the long-headed were of far greater antiquity.

      All we can do is to classify man’s habitation of this earth, as well as we can, under certain well-defined, and known conditions. Thus, that called the Stone Age, must be divided into two parts, that of the roughly chipped flint implements – which is designated the Palæolithic period – and that of the polished and carefully finished stone arms and implements, which necessarily show a later time, and a higher state of civilisation – which is called the Neolithic period. The next age is that of bronze, when man had learned to smelt metals, and make moulds, showing a great advance – and, finally, the Iron Age, in which man had subdued the sterner metal to his will – and this age immediately precedes History.

      The cave men were of undoubted antiquity – and were hunters of the wild beasts that then overran Western Europe, and who split the bones of those animals which they slew in order to obtain the marrow. Although strictly belonging to the Palæolithic period, they manufactured out of that stubborn material, flint, spear-heads, knives, scrapers – and, when the bow had been invented, arrow-heads. Nor were they deficient in the rudiments of art, as some tracings and carvings on pieces of the horns of slaughtered animals, clearly show. Mr. Christie in digging in the Dordogne caves found, at La Madelaine, engraved and carved pictures of reindeer, an ibex, a mammoth, &c., all of them recognisable, and the mammoth, a very good likeness. This was incised on a piece of mammoth tusk.

      The lake men, judging by the remains found near their dwellings, occupied their houses during the Stone and Bronze periods. Herodotus mentions these curious dwellings. “But those around Mount Pangæus and near the Doberes, the Agrianæ, Odomanti, and those who inhabit Lake Prasias22 itself, were not at all subdued by Megabazus. Yet he attempted to conquer those who live upon the lake, in dwellings contrived after this manner: planks, fitted on lofty piles, are placed in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by a single bridge. These piles that support the planks, all the citizens anciently placed there at the common charge; but, afterwards, they established a law to the following effect; whenever a man marries, for each wife he sinks three piles, bringing wood from a mountain called Orbelus; but every man has several wives. They live in the following manner; every man has a hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with a trap door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake. They tie the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and beasts of burden they give fish for fodder; of which there is such an abundance, that, when a man has opened his trap-door, he lets down an empty basket by a cord into the lake, and, after waiting a short time, draws it up full of fish.”23

      Here, then, we have a valuable record of the lake dwellings, and similar ones have been found

21

Ox horns, horn cups.

22

A lake between Macedonia and Thrace.

23

The fishermen of lake Prasias still have lake dwellings as in the time of Herodotus.