comparative anatomy, it is a well-established fact, that oftentimes the
most scientific museum admitted as genuine fragments of the human
osteology what in fact belonged to the gigantic brutes of our earth in
her earliest stages of development. This mistake would go some way in
accounting for the absurd disposition in all generations to view
themselves as abridged editions of their forefathers. Added to which, as
a separate cause of error, there can be little doubt, that intermingled
with the human race there has at most periods of the world been a
separate and Titanic race, such as the Anakim amongst the peoples of
Palestine, the Cyclopean race diffused over the Mediterranean in the
elder ages of Greece, and certain tribes amongst the Alps, known to
Evelyn in his youth (about Cromwell's time) by an unpleasant travelling
experience. These gigantic races, however, were no arguments for a
degeneration amongst the rest of mankind. They were evidently a variety
of man, coexistent with the ordinary races, but liable to be absorbed and
gradually lost by intermarriage amongst other tribes of the ordinary
standard. Occasional exhumations of such Titan skeletons would strengthen
the common prejudice. They would be taken, not for a local variety, but
for an antediluvian or prehistoric type, from which the present races of
man had arisen by gradual degeneration.

These cases of actual but misinterpreted experience, at the same time
that they naturally must tend to fortify the popular prejudice, would
also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin,
so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though
erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational
and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to stand
upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the
several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet,
on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded