GNOME, n. In North-European mythology, a dwarfish imp inhabiting the
interior parts of the earth and having special custody of mineral
treasures. Bjorsen, who died in 1765, says gnomes were common enough
in the southern parts of Sweden in his boyhood, and he frequently saw
them scampering on the hills in the evening twilight. Ludwig
Binkerhoof saw three as recently as 1792, in the Black Forest, and
Sneddeker avers that in 1803 they drove a party of miners out of a
Silesian mine. Basing our computations upon data supplied by these
statements, we find that the gnomes were probably extinct as early as
1764.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
