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MYTHICAL MONSTERS.

[Illustration: THE FUNG WANG. _ACCORDING TO_ FANG HENG.]


MYTHICAL MONSTERS.

by

CHARLES GOULD, B.A.,

Member of the Royal Society of Tasmania;
Late Geological Surveyor of Tasmania.

With Ninety-Three Illustrations.

[Illustration]







London:
W. H. Allen & Co., 13 Waterloo Place. S.W.
Publishers to the India Office.
1886.

(All rights reserved.)

London:
Printed By W H Allen and Co., 13 Waterloo Place, Pall Mall S.W.




PREFACE.


The Author has to express his great obligations to many gentlemen who have
assisted him in the preparation of this volume, either by affording access
to their libraries, or by furnishing or revising translations from the
Chinese, &c.; and he must especially tender them to J. Haas, Esq., the
Austro-Hungarian Vice-Consul at Shanghai, to Mr. Thomas Kingsmill and the
Rev. W. Holt of Shanghai, to Mr. Falconer of Hong-Kong, and to Dr. N. B.
Dennys of Singapore.

For the sake of uniformity, the author has endeavoured to reduce all the
romanised representations of Chinese sounds to the system adopted by S. W.
Williams, whose invaluable dictionary is the most available one for
students. No alteration, however, has been made when quotations from
eminent sinologues like Legge have been inserted.

Should the present volume prove sufficiently interesting to attract
readers, a second one will be issued at a future date, in continuation of
the subject.

_June, 1884._


NOTE BY THE PUBLISHERS.

The Publishers think it right to state that, owing to the Author's absence
in China, the work has not had the advantage of his supervision in its
passage through the press. It is also proper to mention that the MS. left
the Author's hands eighteen months ago.

  13, WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.
    _January, 1886._




CONTENTS.


                                                      PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                           1

  LIST OF AUTHORS CITED                                 27

  CHAPTER I.--ON SOME REMARKABLE ANIMAL FORMS           31

  CHAPTER II.--EXTINCTION OF SPECIES                    42

  CHAPTER III.--ANTIQUITY OF MAN                        78

  CHAPTER IV.--THE DELUGE NOT A MYTH                   101

  CHAPTER V.--ON THE TRANSLATION OF MYTHS BETWEEN
              THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD                137

  CHAPTER VI.--THE DRAGON                              159

  CHAPTER VII.--THE CHINESE DRAGON                     212

  CHAPTER VIII.--THE JAPANESE DRAGON                   248

  CHAPTER IX.--THE SEA-SERPENT                         260

  CHAPTER X.--THE UNICORN                              338

  CHAPTER XI.--THE CHINESE PHOENIX                     366

  APPENDICES                                           375




MYTHICAL MONSTERS.




INTRODUCTION.


It would have been a bold step indeed for anyone, some thirty years ago,
to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories
ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration
due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time-honoured as
fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many
instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or
events.

Now-a-days it is a less hazardous proceeding. The great era of advanced
opinion, initiated by Darwin, which has seen, in the course of a few
years, a larger progress in knowledge in all departments of science than
decades of centuries preceding it, has, among other changes, worked a
complete revolution in the estimation of the value of folk-