For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew.... To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible, and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth.(500)... For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be _inventions_.(501) It is shown by the same Geologist that: Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one million_ years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which have long since become extinct.(502)