第80章 Discovery upon Discovery(2)

"Gentlemen,I have the honor on this auspicious occasion to present to you a man of the Quaternary period of our globe.Many learned men have denied his very existence,while other able persons,perhaps of even higher authority,have affirmed their belief in the reality of his life.If the St.Thomases of paleontology were present,they would reverentially touch him with their fingers and believe in his existence,thus acknowledging their obstinate heresy.I know that science should be careful in relation to all discoveries of this nature.I am not without having heard of the many Barnums and other quacks who have made a trade of suchlike pretended discoveries.I have,of course,heard of the discovery of the kneebones of Ajax,of the pretended finding of the body of Orestes by the Spartiates,and of the body of Asterius,ten spans long,fifteen feet-of which we read in Pausanias.

"I have read everything in relation to the skeleton of Trapani,discovered in the fourteenth century,and which many persons chose to regard as that of Polyphemus,and the history of the giant dug up during the sixteenth century in the environs of Palmyra.You are well aware as I am,gentlemen,of the existence of the celebrated analysis made near Lucerne,in 1577,of the great bones which the celebrated Doctor Felix Plater declared belonged to a giant about nineteen feet high.I have devoured all the treatises of Cassanion,and all those memoirs,pamphlets,speeches,and replies published in reference to the skeleton of Teutobochus,king of the Cimbri,the invader of Gaul,dug out of a gravel pit in Dauphine,in 1613.In the eighteenth century I should have denied,with Peter Campet,the existence of the preadamites of Scheuchzer.I have had in my hands the writing called Gigans-"Here my uncle was afflicted by the natural infirmity which prevented him from pronouncing difficult words in public.It was not exactly stuttering,but a strange sort of constitutional hesitation.

"The writing named Gigans-"he repeated.

He,however,could get no further.

"Giganteo-"

Impossible!The unfortunate word would not come out.There would have been great laughter at the Institution,had the mistake happened there.

"Gigantosteology!"at last exclaimed Professor Hardwigg between two savage growls.

Having got over our difficulty,and getting more and more excited-"Yes,gentlemen,I am well acquainted with all these matters,and know,also,that Cuvier and Blumenbach fully recognized in these bones the undeniable remains of mammoths of the Quaternary period.But after what we now see,to allow a doubt is to insult scientific inquiry.

There is the body;you can see it;you can touch it.It is not a skeleton,it is a complete and uninjured body,preserved with an anthropological object."I did not attempt to controvert this singular and astounding assertion.

"If I could but wash this corpse in a solution of sulphuric acid,"continued my uncle,"I would undertake to remove all the earthy particles,and these resplendent shells,which are incrusted all over this body.But I am without this precious dissolving medium.

Nevertheless,such as it is,this body will tell its own history."Here the Professor held up the fossil body,and exhibited it with rare dexterity.No professional showman could have shown more activity.