The record-union., 1893-01-07
ABOUT GIANTS.
Science Doesn't Believe a Race {
Them Ever Lived.

Science Doesn't Believe a Race OF
Them Ever Lived.
1t is thing worthy of some notice that
there is hardly any collection of folk lore
that does not contain some reference to
human beings of size far above that OF
the ordinary man. These giants were Tor
the most part great only in stature, their
intellectual characteristics being even be-
low those of the ordinary men who lived
in the dim fable land of prehistoric times.
In the worlds nursery tales the giant
often figures, together with fairies and
eltin sprites, and when those tales are out
grown there is general disposition TO
class the giant with the other denlZens OF
fairyland, as mere myth ofthe lmagina-
ton, a companion of hobgobblins and
talking cats. The ogrei vanishes with
Puss in Boots or Jack and the Bean
Stalk, as scientific impossibility.
OF truth science has not as yet given
assent to any theory that there once ex-
listed race of giants on this earth, Even
the once despised dragon and the scorned
sla SERPENT have found a warmer niche in
the scientific heart than Cog and Magog.
Scientific agnosticism has no credence for
the stirring stories OF giants, like those
of Gaelic and Teutonic folk lore. Yet it
is quite possible that science is wrong
and that tradition is right. 1t can be
taken as fact that tradition often is ac-
cepted as right when hidden discoveries
bring to light the long-hidden relics OF
an obscure past.
Priam, Agamemnon, and other figures
of tradition have been accepted as reali-
ties by modern history as the result of
the discoveries of this century. In the
main, tradition is proving to be much
more reliable than it once seemed. Even
on the giant question some modern scien-
fists may be said to be ION the fence" as
. Of ha IiSanupriaC of late
years. To the unscientitic, however,
there appears to be good reason for be-
lieving in a race of giants as matter Of
common sense.
When the world was first covered with
animals, those creatures were of great
size. 1t is generally believed that the
early man was much longer lived than
his descendants, and in the steady prog
ress Of growth it seems strange indeed
if he did not attain greater size in his
many years. More than this, however,
the prehistoric creatures are known to
have been of wondrous proportions.
The hypsiprymnus was some thirty feet
long, and the modern kangaroo would
seem a dwarf beside him. The mosasau-
rus was eighty feet long, while his mod
ern descendants vary in size from the
alligator to the crocodile, rarely. if ever,
twenty feet long. The iarlaps a jumping
lizard, stood twenty-five feet high, dwarf
ing the lizards of the present day TO in
significance.
In view of these facts is it unreasonable
to conjecture that amid that world of
monster creatures monster men also
stalked? Science, because it has not as
yet found as many skeletons of giant
men as Of giant lizards, gives no support
to the traditions which uphold the exist
ence of such race of human beings;
but, as from time immemoriai mankind
has kept it's dead in inaccessible places,
the failure as yet to discover mammoth
men, in view also. of the fact that wild
historic men, and that even of the prime
val animals but few remains have been
discovered, it is more than unwise to
conclude that in this matter tradition is
wholly at fault