Note 150 — Chapter XXII · THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV:[148] ASPECTS OF ITS CIVILISATION

An anecdote will show how much the science of zoölogy was still in its infancy. In 1613 some fossil bones, probably those of a mammoth or some other prehistoric quadruped, were exhumed near the Château of Langon in Dauphiné. A surgeon, Habicot by name, recognised them as the bones of the giant Teutobochus, king of the Teutons, and published a ridiculous poem entitled Gigantéostologie. A physician named Riolan suspected that they might be the bones of an elephant, but as that animal was then unknown in France he searched for a description of it in the Greek authors; then he abandoned this trail, which was the right one, and came to believe that these bones were simply stones to which a caprice of nature had given extraordinary forms. At that time the custom was to explain thus what could not be understood.