Giants

people of extraordinary stature. We find in history mention made of giants, and even of whole races of remarkable stature, but this in general occurs only at an early stage of civilization when the national mind is apt to exaggerate anything unusual. ‘The first mention of giants in the Bible is in Gen. vi. 4, where the Hebrew word is nephilim, a word which occurs only in one other pa age, where it is applied to the sons of Anak, who dwelt about Hebron, and who were described by the terrified spies as of such size that compared with them they appeared in their own sight as gra hoppers. The giants of old Greek or of Norse mythology have, of course, merely a symbolic existence, representing benignant or adverse forces of nature on which man might count in his struggle to reduce the world around him into some kind of order. 'The tales of old writers regarding gigantic human skeletons have now no importance, it being mostly certain that these bones do not belong to giants, but to animals of the primitive world which, from ignorance of anatomy, were taken for human bones. A gigantic human skeleton, however, the largest ever recordad, was found in 1899, near Miamisburg, O., in a locality which contains many relies of the mound builders. It is of prehistoric age and is fo ilized. [t must have belonged to a man 8 feet 1144 inches high, and extremely well proportioned. The skull is of an extremely low order and resembles that of the gorilla, the jaws projecting beyond the face. The teeth are remarkably strong and beautiful in form, and their owner must have lived on a vegetable diet. The following are among authentic instances of persons who attained to the stature of giants: The Roman Emperor Maximin, a Thracian, nearly 9 feet high; Queen Elizabeth’s Flemish porter, 7 feet 6 inches; C. Munster, a yeoman of the guard in Hanover, who died in 1676, 8 feet 6 inches high; Cajanus, a Swedish giant, about 9 feet high, exhibited in London in 1742; C. Byrne, who died in 1783, attained the height of 8 feet 4 inches; Patrick Cotter O’Brien, who lived about the Same time, was 8 feet 7% inches; a Swede in the celebrated grenadier guard of Frederick William I. of Pru ia stood 814 feet. In 1844 died Paul- ‘me Wedde (called Marian), over 8 feet 2 inches at the age of 18. The following are still or were quite recently exhibiting: Anna Swan, a native of Nova Scotia, above 8 feet high; her husband, Captain Bates, a native | of Kentucky, of the same height; Chang-wu-gon, the Chinese giant, 7 feet 9 inches high. Giants’ Causeway (deriving its name from a legend that it was the commencement of a road to be constructed by giants acro the channel to Scotland), a natural pier or mole of columnar basalt, projecting from the N. coast of Antrim, Ireland, into the North Channel, 7 miles N. HE. of Port rush. It is part of an overlying ma of basalt from 300 to 500 feet in thickne , which covers almost the whole county of Antrim, and the BE. part of London derry.