The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-01-26
THE ERA OF CHANTS.

THE ERA OF CHANTS.
 The sacred historian. speaking of the days anterior to the great nood. tells us that there were giants in those days It is brief expression. and no one can now say exactly when ''those days'' was or exactly what Sas meant by the word giants" There have been many fanel- ful speculations as to the size of our first parents. and there have been those who would have us believe that Adam was taller than the Brobdignags of Gulliver's travels. That is all speculation, of course. but that there have been real giants does not admit of q doubt. The Bible Is very precise as to the altitude of Goliah, who was ''six cubits and a span" in height There is some difference of opinion as to the length of the cubit but the old warrior who was knocked out by David's sling-shot must have been Tn ths nelghborhood of ten feet high, which would fit him for an attraction in mod ern side show. But in modern days we find an occasional freak who is much above the usual height Then, too. we have the recent account of a human skel- eton dug up ir Nevada which indicated that the man who claimed it was at least eleven feet high, which would safely put him in the giant class.
 But whatever opinion we may hold as to :he size of the human beings who oc- cupied the earth in the olden time, there is no reason to doubt that the animals, birds and reptiles of those early days were of gigantic proportions. And here Kansas comes into notice. for 1t is now admitted hy practically all paleontologists that Kansas was once the home of the largest creatures in tho world It is sig nificant, too, that this is late discovery. Up to comparatively recent period but little was known of the wonderful pre- historic riches of this continent. In the old world there have been explorations and discoveries going on for centuries. but it has only been or late years that at- tention has been directed to our own land and to the rich field 1t offers for the nat uralist
 It is but fair to say that the entire re- zion of which Kansas Is a part, was at one time the home of many species of huge monsters of which nothing is left but the bones and teeth. These have been preserved by the nature of the soil or rocks in which they are embedded and now. after the lapse of thousands or mill Hons of years they are being brought to light in surprising numbers, to the de- light of students and the wonder of ordi- nary mortals. Even the archaeologists and variety of these remains.
 without going into the scientific names of the many relics that have been dis covered, it may be interesting to refer to a few of the most important of the re- cent finds. First In order seems to have been the fishes, and we are assured that from thirty to sixty feet was not un- common. True, these were not larger than the whales of the present day. but these remains show that they were. 9f various kinds. and that they wsre all of gigantic size. Thea thara~were turtles with shells as L.Srge as the roof of a .hoissS." we are told: crocodiles, or ani- mals of the crocodile family. some of them 100 feet in length; sharks eighty feet long; birds as large as a modern OK animals which compared with our ele- phants almost as one of them compares with a mouse, and other animals, reptiles and birds of such proportions as we can hardly conceive of.
 Nor are other portions of the country entirely destitute of these monsters of the past, for in Ohio there were lately dug up the bones of an animal of the man. moth kind, with tusks eight feet long, and one jaw tooth has been found which weighed over nine pounds, plainly show ing the animal must have been huge specimen of the prehistoric mammal. II seems. from the indications left behind, that most of the Western country was at one time under water, and it was then that the great animals lived and fiouI- ished. As time advanced and the waters receded the reptiles came onto the scene, and after them the birds and then the dry land animals, succeeding each other as climate and other conditions prepared the way for them. Of all those monsters of size we now have but the whale to represent the fishes and the elephant to represent the animals but neither of them attains the proportions of those whose bones are now the only relics.
 When the scientists come to fix the date in which these monsters existed, they are all at sea. The best they can do is to tell us that these creatures lived mil- lions of years ago. and with this we are forced to be content. Whether one, ten or one hundred million years have elaps- ed, none of them will undertake to say, for none of them know. If they are cor rect, then the six thousand years allowed by the Mosaic account seems little more than a moment of time, and when we get away from that we are all at sea, for there is nothing left but speculation. and one date is as reliable as another. Certain it Is that we are wholly unable to see how the great changes evident could have taken place in 5000 years.
 It must be little disappointing to those who insist on mans great antiquity to fail to discover human bones among all these evidences of departed millions of