Sir Hans Sloane
1728
|
Sir HANS SLOANE (1660-1753) was a nobleman and scholar who presided over the Royal Society and whose collections helped establish the British Museum. In his piece, an abridgment of a paper read before the Royal Society in 1728 and published in its transactions in volume 35, Sloane anticipates the French scholar Georges Cuvier by nearly ninety years in proposing that the skeletons of alleged giants were really the bones of fossil elephants. Lacking a theory of extinction and fossilization, Sloane faced challenges in explaining how such fossils formed, and his views were challenged by rivals such as Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, who argued that no one could confuse such bones. However, history proved Sloane right, and his forgotten argument about giants deserves a place as an anticipation of Cuvier’s more famous work, which cites Sloane, albeit secondhand, and not on giants. The following account is an abridgment of a slightly longer original published in 1809. The original may be read here.
|
An Account of Elephants Teeth and Bones, found under Ground.
By Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. No. 403, p. 457.
By Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. No. 403, p. 457.
It is observable, that among the vast variety of extraneous substances, lodged and found in several layers of the earth, at considerable depths, where it is impossible that they should have been bred, there are not so many productions of the earth, as of the sea. And again, among those which must have originally belonged to the earth, there are many more remains of vegetables, than of land animals. It appears however, by the histories of past times, and the accounts of many, both antient and modern authors, that bones, teeth, and sometimes almost whole skeletons of men and animals have been dug up, in all ages of which we have histories, and almost in all parts of the world, of which the most remarkable for their unusual size have been also the most noticed. Thus, for instance, in Ireland there have been found the horns, bones, and almost entire skeletons of a very large sort of deer, which is commonly believed to have been the moose-deer, an animal of an uncommon size, some of which kind are thought to be still living in some remote and unfrequented parts of the continent of America.
Sir Hans Sloane, in this paper, chiefly confines himself to the elephant, and such bones, dentes exerti, tusks and teeth of this animal, as are either in his own possession, or have been mentioned by other authors, as having been found under ground. And first, as to those fossil teeth in his own collection, which doubtless once belonged to elephants, he adduces the following:
No. 116 of his catalogue of quadrupeds and their parts, is the dens exertus, or tusk of an elephant, which was taken up, 12 feet deep, from among sand, or loam, in digging for gravel at the end of Gray’s-Inn-lane, and preserved by tying it about with whale-bones and tape, to keep it from falling to pieces, by Mr. Conyers, an ingenious apothecary, and a great collector of curiosities of all kinds.
As most part of this tooth was fallen to pieces, nothing could be determined about its length, when entire. The largest piece, and also the most entire, is 5 6/10 inches in length, and 9 6/10 inches in circumference, consequently something more than 3 inches in diameter. This piece belonged to the basis, or bottom of the tooth, where it is articulated with the head, as appears by a cavity in form of a cone, which all these tusks have at bottom, and which was filled with the sand of the gravel-pit.
The condition in which this tooth was found suggests the two following remarks. It shows, in the first place, how far subterraneous steams are apt to calcine substances of this kind, which in this tooth was to such a degree, that it was grown extremely brittle, and ready to fall to pieces; and had also acquired an astringent quality common to calcined substances of this kind, which makes them stick pretty close, when held to the tongue. They had altogether the same effect on the very large skeleton, found near Drapani in Sicily, and mentioned by Boccatius, on that remarkable one found near Tonna, described by Tentzelius; as also on two teeth found in Northamptonshire, described next below. However it by no means follows from hence, that all teeth and substances of this kind undergo the like calcination by lying long under ground, for there are others, as those found in Iceland, and sent to Thomas Bartholin, which were turned to a perfect hard, flinty substance.
It serves, in the second place, to ascertain the structure of these teeth, and consequently of ivory in general, to be layer upon layer, or coat upon coat, like the skins in an onion, or rather the annual circles, or rings in trunks of trees. In this piece, belonging to the basis of the tooth, there appeared very visible marks of 9 coats, some of about 1/10 of an inch in thickness. Towards the further end of the tooth, where it tapers almost to a point, these several coats also join together into two or three, and those pretty considerably thick. With some care these coats might be further sub-divided into a considerable number of other smaller ones, perhaps no thicker than a common parchment. The very manner of its falling to pieces is an evident proof of its structure, all the fragments being concave within, and convex without, and the lines of convexity and concavity, fragments of concentric circles, which the several coats composed, when entire.
Thomas Bartholin, in his Treatise De Unicornu, observes, that part of a fossil unicorn horn having been calcined by order of Christian the 4th, king of Denmark, it was found to be composed, after the same manner, of thin layers upon layers; whence he infers, that it was not the horn of an animal, as was commonly pretended, but a tooth, viz. the tooth of a sort of whale in the northern seas, called Narvhal, as he had afterwards an excellent opportunity to verify by one of these unicorn’s horns still sticking in the skull of the creature, which was sent to Wormius by Thorlacus Scutonius, bishop of Iceland. Nor is this structure by any means to be considered as an effect of the calcination, whether brought about by the subterranean steams, or by a chemical trial, but is natural to the tooth, as appears in some measure by a piece of ivory, marked 1181: but still more plain in another marked 731, where several of these coats are by some disease in the tooth actually separated from each other, like the leaves of a parchment book, the ivory on the other side being still firm and close. This strucure appears likewise from the teeth of the very young elephant which died at London, where the uppermost coat, being very moist, cracked on drying, and broke at the top.
No. 750, is part of another dens exertus, which the Rev. Mr. Morton, in his Natural History of Northamptonshire, gives the following account of: “An extraordinary elephant’s tooth, one of those which grow out of the upper jaw, and which for their magnitude and length, have by some writers been accounted horns, was lately taken out of the earth by digging in Bowdon-parva Field. Even the native colour of it has been in great measure preserved; but it is become brittle with lying in the earth; and was broken into three or four pieces transversely by the diggers in taking it up. The two larger pieces of it were presented to me. One of them is somewhat above a yard; the other is 2 feet in length; but the whole tooth must needs have been at least 6 feet long; the thickest part of the larger piece is l6 inches round. The tooth lay buried above 5 feet deep in the earth. The strata, from the surface, downwards to the place where the tooth was lodged, were as follows: 1. The soil 13 or 14 inches. 2. Loam, a foot and a half. 3. Large pebbles, with a small mixture of earth among them, 2 feet and a half. 4. Blue clay. In the upper part of this stratum the tooth was found.” That part of this tooth, bears again very visible marks, both of the calcination it underwent by lying in the earth, and of its laminated structure.
No. 1185, is the dens exertus, or tusk of an elephant, remarkable for its large size, and for its being so very entire. It was found under ground in Siberia, and was brought from thence by Mr. Bell, an ingenious surgeon. It is very entire, of a brownish colour, and hollow at bottom, like other elephants teeth, one of which it plainly appears to be. From the basis, measuring along the outer circumference to the small end, it is 5 feet 7 inches long, and along the inner circumference 4 feet 10 inches. Measuring from the inside of the basis to the small end in a straight line, the distance is of 3 feet 10¼ inches. At the basis, where thickest, it measures 18 inches round, and is therefore 6 inches in diameter: it weighs 42 pounds. The like tusks, and other bones of the elephant, are found in sundry parts of Siberia to a considerable quantity, and the tusks and teeth in particular, when less corrupted, are used all over Russia for ivory. Henricus Wilhelmus Ludolfus, in the Appendix to his Russian Grammar, mentions them among the minerals of Russia, by the name of Mainmotovoikost, and says, that the Russians believe them to be the teeth and bones of an animal living under ground, larger than any one of those above ground. They use it in physic, for the same purposes with the unicorn’s horn; and Ludolfus himself having been presented with a piece by one of his friends, who said, he had it from a Russian of great quality, lately returned from Siberia, found it to be true ivory. He adds, that the most sensible among the Russians affirm them to be elephants teeth, brought thither at the time of the deluge. The description of these teeth and bones given by E. Ysbrants Ides, in his Travels from Moscow to China, is still more extensive, and so particular, that his whole passage deserves to be transcribed at length.
“Among the hills, says he, to the north-east of Makofskoi, not far from thence, the Mammuth’s tongues and legs are found; as they are also particularly on the shores of the rivers Jenize, Trugan, Mongamsea, Lena, and near Jakutskoi, to as far as the frozen sea. In the spring, when the ice of this river breaks, it is driven in such vast quantities, and with such force by the high swollen waters, that it frequently carries very high banks before it, and breaks off the tops of hills, which falling down, discover these animals whole, or their teeth only, almost frozen to the earth, which thaw by degrees. I had a person with me to China, who annually went out in search of these bones: he told me, as a certain truth, that he and his companions found a head of one of these animals, which was discovered by the fall of such a frozen piece of earth. As soon as he opened it, he found the greatest part of the flesh rotten, but it was not without difficulty, that they broke out his teeth, which were placed before his mouth, as those of the elephant are; they also took some bones out of his head, and afterwards came to his fore foot, which they cut off, and carried part of it to the city of Trugan, the circumference of it being as large as that of the waste of an ordinary man. The bones of the head appeared somewhat red, as though they were tinctured with blood. Concerning this animal there are very different reports. The old Siberian Russians affirm, that the Mammuth is very like the elephant, with this only difference, that the teeth of the former are firmer, and not so straight as those of the latter. They also are of opinion, that there were elephants in this country before the deluge, when this climate was warmer, and that their drowned bodies floating on the surface of the water of that flood, were at last washed and forced into subterranean cavities: but that after this Noachian deluge, the air, which was before warm, was changed to cold, and that these bones have lain frozen in the earth ever since, and so are preserved from putrefaction, till they thaw and come to light, which is no very unreasonable conjecture; though it is not absolutely necessary that this climate should have been warmer before the flood, since the carcases of drowned elephants were very likely to float from other places several hundred miles distant, to this country, in the great deluge which covered the surface of the whole earth. Some of these teeth, which doubtless have lain the whole summer on the shore, are entirely black and broken, and can never be restored to their former condition; but those which are found in good case, are as good as ivory, and are accordingly transported to all parts of Muscovy. The abovementioned person also told me, that he once found two teeth in one head, that weighed above 12 Russian pounds, which amounts to 400 German pounds; so that these animals must be of necessity very large, though a great many lesser teeth are found. By all that I could gather from the heathens, there is no person ever saw one of these beasts alive, or can give any account of its shape.”
What E. Ysbrant Ides observes of those teeth that are black and broken, may serve as a comment to the following passage of Pliny, lib. xxxvi. c. 18: Theophrastus autor est, et ebur fossile candido et nigro colore inveniri, et ossa e terra nasci, invenirique lapides osseos. [“Theophrastus states, also, that a fossil ivory is found, both white and black; that the earth, too, produces bones, and that osseous stones are sometimes found.”] Lawrence Lang, in the Journal of his Travels to China, takes notice of these bones, as being found about the river Jenisei, and towards Mangasea, along the banks, and in the hollows occasioned by the fall of the earth. He calls them maman-bones, and informs us, that some of the inhabitants are of opinion, that they are no real bones, teeth, &c. but a sort of cornu fossile, that grows in the earth, and that others will have them to be the bones of the Behemoth, mentioned in the 40th chapter of Job, the description of which they pretend fits the nature of the beast, whose bones and teeth they are imagined to be, those supposed words, in particular, that he is caught with his own eyes, agreeing with the Siberian tradition, that the maman beast dies on coming to light. The same author affirms, from the report, as he says, of credible people, that there have been sometimes found horns, jaw-bones and ribs, with fresh flesh and blood sticking to them. The same is confirmed by John Bernard Muller, in his account of the Ostiacks, who adds, that the horns in particular have been found sometimes all bloody at the broken end, which is generally hollow, and filled with a matter like concreted blood; that they find, together with these teeth, or horns, as he calls them, the skull and jaw-bones, with the grinders still fixed in them, all of a monstrous size; and that he himself, with some of his friends, has seen a grinder weighing more than 24 lb.; that the inhabitants make divers things of these teeth, and that they are mostly to be met with in the coldest places of Siberia, as for instance, Jakutsky, Beresowa, Mangasea, and Ohder.* He likewise gives the description of one of these animals, from the accounts of several persons, who assured him, that they had seen them in the caverns of the high mountains beyond Beresowa: but as this description has very much the appearance of a fable, it is not inserted here. The author of the present state of Russia observes, that some of the Swedish prisoners banished into Siberia, got their livelihood by turning snuff-boxes out of these teeth; and in another place he mentions them among the Siberian commodities, of which the Czar has the monopoly.
[* On this subject the reader is referred to the accounts given by some late travellers into Siberia and particularly to the accounts given by Gmelin and Pallas.]
The accounts hitherto given of these maman-bones and teeth, or at least their most essential parts, are confirmed by a letter of Basilius Tatischow, director general of the mines in Siberia, and counsellor of the Czar’s metallic council, written to the learned Ericus Tenzelius, now bishop of Gothenburg, and printed in the Acta Literaria Sueciae (m.dcc.xxv. Trimestre Secundum, p. 36.) where he mentions the following pieces he had in his own possession: a large horn, as he calls it, or tooth, weighing 183 pounds, which he had the honour to present to his Czarish majesty, and is now kept in the Czar’s collection of curiosities at Petersburg; another large horn, which he presented to the Imperial Academy at Petersburg; another still larger than either of these two, which he caused to be cut, and carved himself several things of it, the ivory being very good; part of the skull, corrupted by having lain in the ground, and so large, that it seemed to him to be of the same size with the skull of a great elephant; the forehead in particular was very thick, and had an excrescence on each side, where the horns are usually fixed; which excrescence however, as the author observes, was so small, as to make him doubtful, whether there was ever any horns fixed to them. The cavity, where the brain was lodged, was exceedingly small in proportion to the bulk of the skull. He had found also a spongy bone, of 18 inches in length, and 3 inches in breadth, fixed to the skull, and of a conical figure, whence he conjectured, that it served to support one of the horns, which is observed also in other animals that bear horns: lastly a grinder, which was 10 inches in length, and 6 in-breadth, besides several of the ribs, shank-bones, and other bones found from time to time, which the author forbore mentioning. The same author has taken no small pains to inquire into the true state of those pits and hollows which the pagan inhabitants of Siberia say these animals make, when they walk under ground, and found that they were nothing but caverns, such as are common in other mountainous countries, and are owing to the force of subterranean rivers and cataracts, which at last eat through and undermine the places where they pass, so as to make the ground above them give way and sink in.
Sir Hans adds one observation of Cornelius le Brun, who in his Travels through Russia to the East Indies, tells us, that in the neighbourhood of Veronitz they had found several elephants teeth on the surface of the ground, which no person could tell how they came there, and that the Czar’s opinion about them was, that Alexander the Great, when he passed the Tanais, or Dony advanced as far as Kostinka, a small town 8 wersts from thence, and that probably some of his elephants died there, of which those teeth were the remains.
No. 764 of Sir Hans Slone’s collection, is one of the grinders of an elephant, which was likewise found in Northamptonshire; which Mr. Morton thus describes. “Northwards, says he, about 50 yards from this place, where the abovementioned dens exertus was found, was also dug up one of the molares, or grinder-teeth of an elephant, perhaps of the same that the tusk belonged to. The grinder whole, or however all the pieces of it I could find (for it was broken into 3 or 4 in taking it up) being put together as they grew, exhibit 13 or 14 parallel lamellae; each of which extends the whole length, and almost the whole thickness of the tooth; and of these it is chiefly composed. But in a live, or perfect tooth, these lamellae do not appear so plainly, being in part crusted over with a white osseous crust, or integument, which in this fossil tooth is almost wholly perished and gone, so that the lamellae are more exposed to view. From the root to the top in the longest part, which is near the middle, it is just 7 inches long. Its thickness in the thickest part of the root, which is also near the middle, is near 3 inches, and it is a little above 8 inches broad: measuring it this way, we take in the whole pile of the lamellae. None of the lamellae are contiguous; there interposes between them a thinner plate of a whiter colour, and a laxer texture. Three or four of the outmost at one end of the pile, appear undulated at the top of the tooth, are near as broad at top as at the root, and have a blunt ending. The rest of them are gradually contracted to a point, and also bend a little over each other. And each of them, as it approaches the top, divides, as it were, into several smaller teeth; and with these the lamellae of this figure terminate. The above-described tooth was lodged at almost 12 feet depth in earth. Above it were the following strata: 1. The top earth, a blackish, clayey soil, about l6 inches. 2. Sandy clay intermixed with pebbles, 5 feet. 3. A blackish sand, with small white stones in it, 1 foot. 4. A loamy, softer sort of gravel, 1 foot. 5. A sharper gravel, about 2 feet. The tooth was found a foot and a half deep in this stratum of gravel. Below this 5th stratum there was a blue clay.” It is very visible, that this grinder also, by lying in the earth, has undergone the same alteration as the tusk above described, found in Bowdon-parva Field.
No. 119 and 120, of Sir Hans Sloane’s catalogue, are two pieces of another large grinder, very probably of an elephant too, turned to a very hard, stony, and almost metallic substance.
N° 121 is a piece of the molaris, or grinder of an elephant, where the undulated lamellae are set very close to each other.
N° 122 is a piece of another grinder, perhaps of an elephant. It has very evident marks of being fossil, as well as the preceding, and is farther remarkable, as a petrifying substance being got between the lamellae has very considerably separated and divided them from each other, in such a manner, that they appear to have been set very loose.
No. 427, of his collection of quadrupeds and their parts, is part of an elephant’s skull, which was found at Gloucester after the year 1630, with some large teeth, some 5, others 7 inches in compass, according to a short inscription written on this very piece.
Sir Hans Sloane, in this paper, chiefly confines himself to the elephant, and such bones, dentes exerti, tusks and teeth of this animal, as are either in his own possession, or have been mentioned by other authors, as having been found under ground. And first, as to those fossil teeth in his own collection, which doubtless once belonged to elephants, he adduces the following:
No. 116 of his catalogue of quadrupeds and their parts, is the dens exertus, or tusk of an elephant, which was taken up, 12 feet deep, from among sand, or loam, in digging for gravel at the end of Gray’s-Inn-lane, and preserved by tying it about with whale-bones and tape, to keep it from falling to pieces, by Mr. Conyers, an ingenious apothecary, and a great collector of curiosities of all kinds.
As most part of this tooth was fallen to pieces, nothing could be determined about its length, when entire. The largest piece, and also the most entire, is 5 6/10 inches in length, and 9 6/10 inches in circumference, consequently something more than 3 inches in diameter. This piece belonged to the basis, or bottom of the tooth, where it is articulated with the head, as appears by a cavity in form of a cone, which all these tusks have at bottom, and which was filled with the sand of the gravel-pit.
The condition in which this tooth was found suggests the two following remarks. It shows, in the first place, how far subterraneous steams are apt to calcine substances of this kind, which in this tooth was to such a degree, that it was grown extremely brittle, and ready to fall to pieces; and had also acquired an astringent quality common to calcined substances of this kind, which makes them stick pretty close, when held to the tongue. They had altogether the same effect on the very large skeleton, found near Drapani in Sicily, and mentioned by Boccatius, on that remarkable one found near Tonna, described by Tentzelius; as also on two teeth found in Northamptonshire, described next below. However it by no means follows from hence, that all teeth and substances of this kind undergo the like calcination by lying long under ground, for there are others, as those found in Iceland, and sent to Thomas Bartholin, which were turned to a perfect hard, flinty substance.
It serves, in the second place, to ascertain the structure of these teeth, and consequently of ivory in general, to be layer upon layer, or coat upon coat, like the skins in an onion, or rather the annual circles, or rings in trunks of trees. In this piece, belonging to the basis of the tooth, there appeared very visible marks of 9 coats, some of about 1/10 of an inch in thickness. Towards the further end of the tooth, where it tapers almost to a point, these several coats also join together into two or three, and those pretty considerably thick. With some care these coats might be further sub-divided into a considerable number of other smaller ones, perhaps no thicker than a common parchment. The very manner of its falling to pieces is an evident proof of its structure, all the fragments being concave within, and convex without, and the lines of convexity and concavity, fragments of concentric circles, which the several coats composed, when entire.
Thomas Bartholin, in his Treatise De Unicornu, observes, that part of a fossil unicorn horn having been calcined by order of Christian the 4th, king of Denmark, it was found to be composed, after the same manner, of thin layers upon layers; whence he infers, that it was not the horn of an animal, as was commonly pretended, but a tooth, viz. the tooth of a sort of whale in the northern seas, called Narvhal, as he had afterwards an excellent opportunity to verify by one of these unicorn’s horns still sticking in the skull of the creature, which was sent to Wormius by Thorlacus Scutonius, bishop of Iceland. Nor is this structure by any means to be considered as an effect of the calcination, whether brought about by the subterranean steams, or by a chemical trial, but is natural to the tooth, as appears in some measure by a piece of ivory, marked 1181: but still more plain in another marked 731, where several of these coats are by some disease in the tooth actually separated from each other, like the leaves of a parchment book, the ivory on the other side being still firm and close. This strucure appears likewise from the teeth of the very young elephant which died at London, where the uppermost coat, being very moist, cracked on drying, and broke at the top.
No. 750, is part of another dens exertus, which the Rev. Mr. Morton, in his Natural History of Northamptonshire, gives the following account of: “An extraordinary elephant’s tooth, one of those which grow out of the upper jaw, and which for their magnitude and length, have by some writers been accounted horns, was lately taken out of the earth by digging in Bowdon-parva Field. Even the native colour of it has been in great measure preserved; but it is become brittle with lying in the earth; and was broken into three or four pieces transversely by the diggers in taking it up. The two larger pieces of it were presented to me. One of them is somewhat above a yard; the other is 2 feet in length; but the whole tooth must needs have been at least 6 feet long; the thickest part of the larger piece is l6 inches round. The tooth lay buried above 5 feet deep in the earth. The strata, from the surface, downwards to the place where the tooth was lodged, were as follows: 1. The soil 13 or 14 inches. 2. Loam, a foot and a half. 3. Large pebbles, with a small mixture of earth among them, 2 feet and a half. 4. Blue clay. In the upper part of this stratum the tooth was found.” That part of this tooth, bears again very visible marks, both of the calcination it underwent by lying in the earth, and of its laminated structure.
No. 1185, is the dens exertus, or tusk of an elephant, remarkable for its large size, and for its being so very entire. It was found under ground in Siberia, and was brought from thence by Mr. Bell, an ingenious surgeon. It is very entire, of a brownish colour, and hollow at bottom, like other elephants teeth, one of which it plainly appears to be. From the basis, measuring along the outer circumference to the small end, it is 5 feet 7 inches long, and along the inner circumference 4 feet 10 inches. Measuring from the inside of the basis to the small end in a straight line, the distance is of 3 feet 10¼ inches. At the basis, where thickest, it measures 18 inches round, and is therefore 6 inches in diameter: it weighs 42 pounds. The like tusks, and other bones of the elephant, are found in sundry parts of Siberia to a considerable quantity, and the tusks and teeth in particular, when less corrupted, are used all over Russia for ivory. Henricus Wilhelmus Ludolfus, in the Appendix to his Russian Grammar, mentions them among the minerals of Russia, by the name of Mainmotovoikost, and says, that the Russians believe them to be the teeth and bones of an animal living under ground, larger than any one of those above ground. They use it in physic, for the same purposes with the unicorn’s horn; and Ludolfus himself having been presented with a piece by one of his friends, who said, he had it from a Russian of great quality, lately returned from Siberia, found it to be true ivory. He adds, that the most sensible among the Russians affirm them to be elephants teeth, brought thither at the time of the deluge. The description of these teeth and bones given by E. Ysbrants Ides, in his Travels from Moscow to China, is still more extensive, and so particular, that his whole passage deserves to be transcribed at length.
“Among the hills, says he, to the north-east of Makofskoi, not far from thence, the Mammuth’s tongues and legs are found; as they are also particularly on the shores of the rivers Jenize, Trugan, Mongamsea, Lena, and near Jakutskoi, to as far as the frozen sea. In the spring, when the ice of this river breaks, it is driven in such vast quantities, and with such force by the high swollen waters, that it frequently carries very high banks before it, and breaks off the tops of hills, which falling down, discover these animals whole, or their teeth only, almost frozen to the earth, which thaw by degrees. I had a person with me to China, who annually went out in search of these bones: he told me, as a certain truth, that he and his companions found a head of one of these animals, which was discovered by the fall of such a frozen piece of earth. As soon as he opened it, he found the greatest part of the flesh rotten, but it was not without difficulty, that they broke out his teeth, which were placed before his mouth, as those of the elephant are; they also took some bones out of his head, and afterwards came to his fore foot, which they cut off, and carried part of it to the city of Trugan, the circumference of it being as large as that of the waste of an ordinary man. The bones of the head appeared somewhat red, as though they were tinctured with blood. Concerning this animal there are very different reports. The old Siberian Russians affirm, that the Mammuth is very like the elephant, with this only difference, that the teeth of the former are firmer, and not so straight as those of the latter. They also are of opinion, that there were elephants in this country before the deluge, when this climate was warmer, and that their drowned bodies floating on the surface of the water of that flood, were at last washed and forced into subterranean cavities: but that after this Noachian deluge, the air, which was before warm, was changed to cold, and that these bones have lain frozen in the earth ever since, and so are preserved from putrefaction, till they thaw and come to light, which is no very unreasonable conjecture; though it is not absolutely necessary that this climate should have been warmer before the flood, since the carcases of drowned elephants were very likely to float from other places several hundred miles distant, to this country, in the great deluge which covered the surface of the whole earth. Some of these teeth, which doubtless have lain the whole summer on the shore, are entirely black and broken, and can never be restored to their former condition; but those which are found in good case, are as good as ivory, and are accordingly transported to all parts of Muscovy. The abovementioned person also told me, that he once found two teeth in one head, that weighed above 12 Russian pounds, which amounts to 400 German pounds; so that these animals must be of necessity very large, though a great many lesser teeth are found. By all that I could gather from the heathens, there is no person ever saw one of these beasts alive, or can give any account of its shape.”
What E. Ysbrant Ides observes of those teeth that are black and broken, may serve as a comment to the following passage of Pliny, lib. xxxvi. c. 18: Theophrastus autor est, et ebur fossile candido et nigro colore inveniri, et ossa e terra nasci, invenirique lapides osseos. [“Theophrastus states, also, that a fossil ivory is found, both white and black; that the earth, too, produces bones, and that osseous stones are sometimes found.”] Lawrence Lang, in the Journal of his Travels to China, takes notice of these bones, as being found about the river Jenisei, and towards Mangasea, along the banks, and in the hollows occasioned by the fall of the earth. He calls them maman-bones, and informs us, that some of the inhabitants are of opinion, that they are no real bones, teeth, &c. but a sort of cornu fossile, that grows in the earth, and that others will have them to be the bones of the Behemoth, mentioned in the 40th chapter of Job, the description of which they pretend fits the nature of the beast, whose bones and teeth they are imagined to be, those supposed words, in particular, that he is caught with his own eyes, agreeing with the Siberian tradition, that the maman beast dies on coming to light. The same author affirms, from the report, as he says, of credible people, that there have been sometimes found horns, jaw-bones and ribs, with fresh flesh and blood sticking to them. The same is confirmed by John Bernard Muller, in his account of the Ostiacks, who adds, that the horns in particular have been found sometimes all bloody at the broken end, which is generally hollow, and filled with a matter like concreted blood; that they find, together with these teeth, or horns, as he calls them, the skull and jaw-bones, with the grinders still fixed in them, all of a monstrous size; and that he himself, with some of his friends, has seen a grinder weighing more than 24 lb.; that the inhabitants make divers things of these teeth, and that they are mostly to be met with in the coldest places of Siberia, as for instance, Jakutsky, Beresowa, Mangasea, and Ohder.* He likewise gives the description of one of these animals, from the accounts of several persons, who assured him, that they had seen them in the caverns of the high mountains beyond Beresowa: but as this description has very much the appearance of a fable, it is not inserted here. The author of the present state of Russia observes, that some of the Swedish prisoners banished into Siberia, got their livelihood by turning snuff-boxes out of these teeth; and in another place he mentions them among the Siberian commodities, of which the Czar has the monopoly.
[* On this subject the reader is referred to the accounts given by some late travellers into Siberia and particularly to the accounts given by Gmelin and Pallas.]
The accounts hitherto given of these maman-bones and teeth, or at least their most essential parts, are confirmed by a letter of Basilius Tatischow, director general of the mines in Siberia, and counsellor of the Czar’s metallic council, written to the learned Ericus Tenzelius, now bishop of Gothenburg, and printed in the Acta Literaria Sueciae (m.dcc.xxv. Trimestre Secundum, p. 36.) where he mentions the following pieces he had in his own possession: a large horn, as he calls it, or tooth, weighing 183 pounds, which he had the honour to present to his Czarish majesty, and is now kept in the Czar’s collection of curiosities at Petersburg; another large horn, which he presented to the Imperial Academy at Petersburg; another still larger than either of these two, which he caused to be cut, and carved himself several things of it, the ivory being very good; part of the skull, corrupted by having lain in the ground, and so large, that it seemed to him to be of the same size with the skull of a great elephant; the forehead in particular was very thick, and had an excrescence on each side, where the horns are usually fixed; which excrescence however, as the author observes, was so small, as to make him doubtful, whether there was ever any horns fixed to them. The cavity, where the brain was lodged, was exceedingly small in proportion to the bulk of the skull. He had found also a spongy bone, of 18 inches in length, and 3 inches in breadth, fixed to the skull, and of a conical figure, whence he conjectured, that it served to support one of the horns, which is observed also in other animals that bear horns: lastly a grinder, which was 10 inches in length, and 6 in-breadth, besides several of the ribs, shank-bones, and other bones found from time to time, which the author forbore mentioning. The same author has taken no small pains to inquire into the true state of those pits and hollows which the pagan inhabitants of Siberia say these animals make, when they walk under ground, and found that they were nothing but caverns, such as are common in other mountainous countries, and are owing to the force of subterranean rivers and cataracts, which at last eat through and undermine the places where they pass, so as to make the ground above them give way and sink in.
Sir Hans adds one observation of Cornelius le Brun, who in his Travels through Russia to the East Indies, tells us, that in the neighbourhood of Veronitz they had found several elephants teeth on the surface of the ground, which no person could tell how they came there, and that the Czar’s opinion about them was, that Alexander the Great, when he passed the Tanais, or Dony advanced as far as Kostinka, a small town 8 wersts from thence, and that probably some of his elephants died there, of which those teeth were the remains.
No. 764 of Sir Hans Slone’s collection, is one of the grinders of an elephant, which was likewise found in Northamptonshire; which Mr. Morton thus describes. “Northwards, says he, about 50 yards from this place, where the abovementioned dens exertus was found, was also dug up one of the molares, or grinder-teeth of an elephant, perhaps of the same that the tusk belonged to. The grinder whole, or however all the pieces of it I could find (for it was broken into 3 or 4 in taking it up) being put together as they grew, exhibit 13 or 14 parallel lamellae; each of which extends the whole length, and almost the whole thickness of the tooth; and of these it is chiefly composed. But in a live, or perfect tooth, these lamellae do not appear so plainly, being in part crusted over with a white osseous crust, or integument, which in this fossil tooth is almost wholly perished and gone, so that the lamellae are more exposed to view. From the root to the top in the longest part, which is near the middle, it is just 7 inches long. Its thickness in the thickest part of the root, which is also near the middle, is near 3 inches, and it is a little above 8 inches broad: measuring it this way, we take in the whole pile of the lamellae. None of the lamellae are contiguous; there interposes between them a thinner plate of a whiter colour, and a laxer texture. Three or four of the outmost at one end of the pile, appear undulated at the top of the tooth, are near as broad at top as at the root, and have a blunt ending. The rest of them are gradually contracted to a point, and also bend a little over each other. And each of them, as it approaches the top, divides, as it were, into several smaller teeth; and with these the lamellae of this figure terminate. The above-described tooth was lodged at almost 12 feet depth in earth. Above it were the following strata: 1. The top earth, a blackish, clayey soil, about l6 inches. 2. Sandy clay intermixed with pebbles, 5 feet. 3. A blackish sand, with small white stones in it, 1 foot. 4. A loamy, softer sort of gravel, 1 foot. 5. A sharper gravel, about 2 feet. The tooth was found a foot and a half deep in this stratum of gravel. Below this 5th stratum there was a blue clay.” It is very visible, that this grinder also, by lying in the earth, has undergone the same alteration as the tusk above described, found in Bowdon-parva Field.
No. 119 and 120, of Sir Hans Sloane’s catalogue, are two pieces of another large grinder, very probably of an elephant too, turned to a very hard, stony, and almost metallic substance.
N° 121 is a piece of the molaris, or grinder of an elephant, where the undulated lamellae are set very close to each other.
N° 122 is a piece of another grinder, perhaps of an elephant. It has very evident marks of being fossil, as well as the preceding, and is farther remarkable, as a petrifying substance being got between the lamellae has very considerably separated and divided them from each other, in such a manner, that they appear to have been set very loose.
No. 427, of his collection of quadrupeds and their parts, is part of an elephant’s skull, which was found at Gloucester after the year 1630, with some large teeth, some 5, others 7 inches in compass, according to a short inscription written on this very piece.
Of Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants. Part the second.
By Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. No. 404, p. 497.
By Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. No. 404, p. 497.
Here Sir Hans Sloane offers some remarks on divers accounts of bones and teeth found under ground, met with in several ancient and modern authors, and which give him an opportunity of examining into the skeletons, and parts of skeletons, which are shown about as undeniable monuments of the existence of giants.
And first, as many of those bones and teeth, which are kept and shown about for bones and teeth of giants, have been found, on a more accurate inspection, to be only the bones and teeth of elephants or whales, it may from thence very probably be inferred, that others also, which for want of a sufficient description cannot be accurately enough accounted for, must have belonged either to these or to some other large animal. Thus, the fore fin of a whale, stripped of its web and skin, was not long since publicly shown for the bones of a giant’s hand; and Sir H. S. has in his own possession, No. 1027, the vertebra of the loin of a large whale, which was brought him from Oxfordshire, where he was assured it was found under ground, and afterwards used as a stool to sit on. Now if a computation had been made from the proportion of this vertebra to that of the other parts of the skeleton, and all had been supposed to have belonged to a man, such a skeleton would have exceeded in measure, all those fabulous skeletons of giants mentioned by authors.
Hence Sir H. S. observes, that it would be an object well worth the inquiries of ingenious anatomists, to make a sort of comparative anatomy of bones; to examine, with more accuracy than has been hitherto done, what proportions the skeletons and parts of skeletons of men and animals bear to each other, with regard either to the size, or figure, or structure, or any other quality. This would doubtless lead us to many discoveries, and is otherwise one of those things which seem to be wanting, to make anatomy a science still more perfect and complete. The very vertebra abovementioned may serve to show the usefulness of such observations. It differs in many things from the vertebrae of men and land-animals, as do the vertebrae of whales, and the fishes of the cetaceous kind in general; and it is a very easy matter to distinguish them from each other. The body of the vertebra is considerably larger in proportion, and also lighter and more porous. The transverse processes arise from the middle of it on each side. The oblique descending processes are altogether wanting; and the arch, or foramen, which the spinal marrow passes through, is made up by the spinal process and the oblique ascending ones only: the body of the vertebra is very rough and uneven on each end, full of small holes and eminences, which receive the holes and eminences of a round bone, or plate, which answers to the epiphysis in a human vertebra, of which there are two between each vertebra, joined together by an intermediate strong and pretty thick cartilage, probably to facilitate the motion, and particularly the flexion of these animals in the sea. But to return.
There are many skeletons, that have from time to time been found under ground, and are mentioned by authors, who speak of them as skeletons of giants, and undeniable monuments of their existence, which he rather takes to be the skeletons of elephants, whales, or some other huge land or sea animal. Of this kind seem to be the pretended skeletons of giants of 12, 20, and 30 cubits in height, mentioned by Philostratus; the skeleton of 46 cubits in height, which according to Pliny was found in the cavity of a mountain in Creta, on the overthrowing of that mountain by an earthquake; the skeleton 60 cubits high, which Strabo says, was found near Tingis, now Tangier, in Mauritania, and was supposed to have been the skeleton of Anteus; the skeleton of Pallas, as pretended, found at Rome in the year 1500, which was higher than the walls of that city; and likewise that, which Simon Majolus says, was found in England in the year 1171: “Long before Fulgosus’s time, upwards of 300 years, viz. anno 117 1 , by the overflowing of a river, a human skeleton was discovered in England, where the bones are still in their proper order: the length of the whole body was 50 feet.”
There are others, the description of which concludes more clearly for their having once belonged to elephants, though it could not be positively asserted, that they did. St. Austin, discoursing of the existence and great feats of the giants before the deluge, mentions in proof of what he advances, that he himself, with several others, saw at Utica, on the sea-shore, the grinder of a man so large, that if it had been cut into teeth of an ordinary size, at least 100 might have been made of it. Hieronymus Magius, though himself very much prejudiced in favour of the existence of giants, yet suspects this tooth, mentioned by St. Austin, to have been rather the tooth of an elephant, or else some huge creature of the sea, than that of a man. But Ludovicus Vives, in his commentaries on that passage of St. Austin, takes notice, that in the church of St. Christopher at Hispella, he was shown a tooth larger than his fist, which they pretended was one of the teeth of that huge saint, no doubt, on as good ground as that very large shoulder-bone, which Hieronymus Magius says was shown in a church at Venice, was the shoulder-bone of St. Christopher.
The pretended skeleton of a giant, which was found near Drapini, a castle in Sicily, on digging the foundation of a house, and is described by Joh. Boccatius, is again not unlikely to have been the skeleton of a large elephant. For though the greater part of the bones, through the length of time, and the force of the subterranean steams, were so rotten, that after being exposed to the air, they fell to pieces almost on touching, yet three of the teeth were found entire, which weighed 100 oz. and were by the inhabitants of Drapini hung up in one of their churches, to perpetuate the memory of this fact. They likewise found part of the skull, capacious enough to hold some bushels of corn, and one of the shank-bones, which was so large, that on comparing it with the shank-bone of an ordinary man, it was judged that this giant, whom some took to be Erick, others Ethellus, others one of the Cyclops, and again others the renowned Polyphemus himself, must have been 200 cubits high; according to which calculation, he is figured and represented by F. Kircher, as by far the largest of a whole gradation of giants, whom, after this, he places in the following order:
[in] Cubits.
The case is still less doubtful with regard to those bones which were found in France in 1456, in the reign of Charles the 7th, by the side of a river in the barony of Crussole, not far from Valence. Johannes Marius in libris de Galliarum Illustrationibus, Calamasus in suis de Biturigibus Commentariis, Fulgosus in his Annals, et Joh. Cassanio of Monstroeuil, in his Treatise of Giants, severally take notice of these bones, which were so large, that the whole height of the giant, to whom it was thought they belonged, and who was supposed to have been the giant Briatus, was conjectured to have been of 15 cubits. The skull alone was 2 cubits thick, and the shoulder-bone 6 cubits broad. Sometime after, other bones of this kind were found in the same barony, near the same place, part of which Cassanio saw himself, and gives such a particular description of one of the teeth, as leaves little room to doubt, but that it was the grinder, and consequently the other bones, the bones of an elephant. His words arc to this effect: “I saw there several bones, among which was a tooth of a surprising size, 12 inches long, and weighing 8lb.; it was much longer than it was thick, and had some roots by which it was fastened in the jaw; the part by which the food was ground was 4 inches broad, and rather concave.” He adds further, that such another tooth was kept at Charmes, a neighbouring castle; that he measured the length of the place, whence these bones were dug, and found it to be 9 paces; that some time after, more bones were discovered at the same place, and that the country all thereabouts was very mountainous, and such as the giants in all probability delighted to dwell and command in. Sir Hans Sloane has seen some of these bones brought from this place, which he took to have belonged to an elephant, by some large cells between the tables of the skull, which are in the skull of that animal.
Hieronymus Magius gives an account of a very large skull, 11 spans in circumference, and some other bones, probably belonging to that skull, which were dug up near Tunis in Africa, by two Spanish slaves, as they were ploughing in afield. He was informed of this matter by Melchior Guilandinus, who saw the skull himself, when he had the misfortune to be taken by the Rovers, and carried into slavery to that place in the year 1559. Sir Hans Sloane is the more inclined to believe, that this skull and bones were part of the skeleton of an elephant, because a like large skeleton was dug up near the same place some time after, which by one of the teeth sent to Peiresk was made out to have been the skeleton of an elephant.
Sir H. Sloane now comes to those bones, teeth and tusks, or horns, as some call them, which are mentioned by authors to have been dug up in divers parts of the world, and have been made out by them, or otherwise appear by their description and figures, indisputably to belong to the elephant. Johannes Goropius Becanus, though he lived in an age when the stories of giants were very much credited, and had found their advocates, even among persons eminent for their learning and judgment, yet ventured to assert, that the tooth which was kept and shown at Antwerp, as the tooth of that unmerciful giant, whose defeat, brought about as they pretended by Brabo a son of Julius Caesar, and king of the Arcadians, was fabulously reputed to have given occasion to the building of that castle and city, was nothing but the grinder of an elephant. However displeasing this assertion might be, as Goropius further adds, to those who are delighted with such idle and ridiculous stories, yet to the judicious it will appear the less surprising, on account of what passed not long before he wrote this book, when the almost entire skeletons of two elephants, with the grinders, and likewise the dentes exerti, or tusks, were found near Wielworda, Vilvorden, as they were digging a canal from Brussels to the river Rupel, to defend that town and country from the incursions of those of Mechlen. Goropius conjectures, that these elephants had been brought thither by the Romans, at the time either of the emperor Galien, or Posthumus.
A very large skeleton, likewise of a giant, as pretended, was dug up near Tunis in Africa, about the year 1630, of which one Thomas d’Arcos, who was then at that place, sent an account, together with one of the teeth, to the learned Peiresk. The skull was so large, that it contained eight meilleroles (a measure of wine in Provence) or one modius, as Gassendus calls it, or a pint and a half Paris measure. Sometime after a live elephant having been shown at Toulon, Peiresk ordered, that he should be brought to his country seat, on purpose to take that opportunity to examine the teeth of the creature, the impressions of which he caused to be taken in wax, and thus found, that the pretended giant’s tooth sent him from Tunis, was only the grinder of an elephant. This is the second large skeleton dug up near Tunis in Africa, and it appearing plainly by the tooth sent to Peiresk, that it was the skeleton of an elephant, it may from thence very probably be conjectured, some other circumstances concurring, that the other also, which Guilandinus saw there, must have been rather of an elephant than of a giant.
Thomas Bartholin mentions the grinder, or maxillar-tooth, of an elephant, which was dug up in Iceland, and sent to him by Petrus Kesenius. It was turned to a perfect stony substance, like flint, as was also the tusk of a rosmarus, dug up in the same island.
A large tooth, which by its shape appears plainly to be the grinder of an elephant, is described and figured by Lambecius, who had it out of the emperor’s library, though he could not be informed where it was found, or how it got thither. It weighed 28 ounces, and was commonly taken to be the tooth of a giant. Antonius de Pozzis, chief physician to the emperor, in a letter to Lambecius, affirms it to be an elephant’s tooth, and conjectures, that it was dug up at Baden, about 4 miles from Vienna, where, but a few years before he wrote this letter, they had found also the os tibiae et femoris of an elephant.
Another tooth, probably of an elephant too, is described and figured by Lambecius, who had it out of the emperor’s library. It weighed 23 ounces and was found in the year 1644 at Krembs, in the lower Austria, on increasing the fortifications of that place.
The year following, when the Swedes came to besiege the town of Krembs, a whole skeleton of a giant, as was pretended, was found at the top of a neighbouring mountain, near an old Tower. The besiegers, in their intrenchments there, being very much incommoded by the water that came down from the mountains, dug a ditch 3 or 4 fathoms deep, to lead it another way. In digging this ditch they found that skeleton, which was much admired for its unusual size. Many of the bones, chiefly those of the head, fell to pieces on being exposed to the air; others were broken by the carelesness of the workmen; some escaped entire, and were sent to learned men in Poland and Sweden. Among these was a shoulder-bone, with an acetabulum in it, large enough to hold a cannon-ball. The head, with regard to its bulk, was compared to a round table, and the bones of the arms, or fore-legs, as thick as a man of an ordinary size. One of the grinders, weighing 5 pounds, was given to the Jesuits at Krembs: another is figured by Happelius (in his Relationes Curiosae, tom. 4, p. 47, 48,) and it appears plainly by the figure of it, that it is an elephant’s tooth. It weighed 4lb. 3 oz. Nuremberg weight.
Again, in Lambecius’s Bibliotheca Qesarea Vindobonensis, are two figures, and the description of a very large elephant’s tooth, which weighed 4¾ lb. It was sent from Constantinople to Vienna in 1678. They pretended that it was found near Jerusalem, in a spacious subterranean cavern, in the grave of a giant, which had the following inscription on it in the Chaldaic language and characters; “ Here lies the giant OG;” whence it was conjectured to have been the tooth of Og, king of Basan, who was defeated by Moses, and who “only remained of the remnants of giants; whose bedstead was of iron, 9 cubits was the length thereof, and 4 cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”
Hieronymus Ambrosius Langenmantel, a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, inserted into the Ephemerides of that Academy, an abstract of a letter to himself, from Johannes Ciampini in Rome, concerning some very large bones, viz. the shank- bone, the shoulder-bone, and 5 vertebrae, one of which was a vertebra of the neck, which were dug up near Vitorchiani, in the bishopric of Viterbo, in the year 1687. They weighed altogether upwards of 1 SO Roman pounds; and having been compared with the other like bones in several collections at Rome, particularly the Chisian, they appeared to be by far the largest Most people took them to be the bones of a giant, but Ciampini, and some others, taking them, with more probability, for the bones of an elephant, or some other large animal, and knowing that there was in the Medicean collection at Florence a complete skeleton of an elephant, they procured a copy of it, and found on comparison, the abovementioned bones so exactly to correspond with it, as to leave no room to doubt, but that they had been part of an elephant’s skeleton.
The skeleton of an elephant, which was dug up in a sand pit near Tonna in Thuringen, in 1695, is one of the most curious, and the most complete in its kind; as they found the whole head, with 4 grinders, and the two dentes exerti, or tusks, the bones of the fore and hind-legs, one of the shoulder-bones, the back-bones, with the ribs, and several of the vertebrae of the neck. But the whole has been so accurately described by Wilhelmus Ernestus Tentzelius, Historiographer to the dukes of Saxony, in a letter to the learned Magliabechi, printed in the Philos. Trans. No. 234, that it is needless to add any thing, the rather, as that gentleman obliged the Royal Society with some pieces of the bones of this elephant, with part of the skull, in which appeared its cells, some of the grinders, and part of the dentes exerti; all which being produced at a meeting of the Royal Society, were found exactly agreeable to his description, and ordered to be carefully preserved in their repository. From the surface of the ground, down to the place where these bones were found, the diposition of the strata was as follows: a black soil 4 feet deep, gravel 2½ feet, the middle of which consisted of osteocolla and stones to the depth of 2 feet, osteocolla and stones half a foot, a sandy clay 6 feet, with about 2 inches of osteocolla in the middle, osteocolla and pebbles 1 foot, gravel 6 feet, a white and fine sand, of unknown depth, in which the bones were found.
In vol. 2, of Count Marsili’s Danubius, where he treats of the antiquities he observed along this river, mention is made of several bones and teeth of elephants, which that inquisitive nobleman met with in Hungary and Transylvania, and which are now in his valuable collection of natural and artificial curiosities at Bologna. According to the best information, the people of whom he had them could give him, they were found in rivers, lakes, and pools. One of the vertebrae, a grinder, and a considerable part of the dens exertus, or tusk, were found in the lake, or pool of Hiulca. Two fragments of the os tibiae, a little corroded on the inside, were taken out of a pool near Fogheras in Transylvania once the seat of the princes of that country; and the whole lower jaw, with two grinders as yet sticking in it, were found in the standing waters by the river Tibiscus, a little above die Romer skantz, or the Roman fort.
Above was related the opinion of Goropius on the antiquity of those two elephants, whose skeletons were found near Vilvorden, which he traces no higher than the time of the Romans, and their expeditions into those countries, particularly under Galien and Posthumus. Count Marsili is of the same opinion, with regard to the bones and teeth found by him in Transylvania. He takes notice, that whoever is acquainted with the great use the Romans made of elephants in their military expeditions, ought not to be surprised that bones and teeth of them are found in those northern countries, where otherwise there cannot have been any; and he urges, as a further proof of this assertion, that they are found in pools and lakes, it having been the custom of the Romans, to throw the carcases of dead elephants into the water, as it is still practised to this day with the carcases of horses and other beasts, to prevent the distempers and other inconveniencies, which their putrefaction might otherwise occasion. On the other hand, there are many arguments, taken from the size of the beasts, whose skeletons are thus found under ground, which sometimes far exceeds any that was, or could have been brought alive into Europe, from the condition they are found in, and from the particular disposition of the strata above the places where they are found; by which it appears, almost to a demonstration, that they must be of much greater antiquity, and that they cannot have been buried at the places where they are found, or brought thither any otherwise, than by the force of the waters of a universal deluge. To insist only on one of these arguments: if the skeletons of elephants, which are thus found under ground, and at considerable depths too, had been buried there, either by the Romans, or any other nation, the strata above them must necessarily have been broken through and altered; whereas, on the contrary, several observations inform us, that they were found entire; whence it appears, that what is found underneath, must have been lodged there, if not before, at least at the very time when these strata were formed; consequently long before the Romans.
But there is another argument, which seems to bear very hard against the conjectures of Goropius and Count Marsili. Tentzelius has already mentioned it, and it is urged from the great value of ivory at all times, and particularly among the Romans, which appears by many passages in antient authors; as for instance, by a very remarkable one in Pliny, lib. 12, c. 4, who takes notice, that among the valuable presents, which the Ethiopians were obliged to make to the kings of Persia, by way of a tribute, there were 20 large teeth (doubtless the dentes exerti) of elephants, and then adds, Tanta ebori auctoritas erat. Now it is to be presumed, that the Romans would not have neglected to take away the teeth, and particularly the dentes exerti of dead elephants, before they flung their carcases into the water, whereas there has scarcely been any skeleton, or any part of the skeleton of an elephant dug up any where, but the teeth were found along with them, and even among those figured by Count Marsili, there are three grinders, and a considerable part of one of the dentes exerti.
Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, says, That he was presented by William Leveson Gower of Trentham, Esq. with the lower jaw of some animal, with large teeth sticking in it, dug up in a marl pit in his ground, and which, on comparison, he found exactly agreeable to the lower jaw of the elephant’s skull in Mr. Ashmole’s Museum at Oxford.
In the Museum of the Royal Society there are two fossil-bones of elephants: one was given by Sir Thomas Brown of Norwich, the other was brought from Syria for the os tibiae of a giant; but Dr. Grew proves by an exact computation, that it can never have been the os tibiae of a human skeleton, by being full 20 times as thick, and but 3 times as long. It is 42 inches long, and 12 in circumference, where it is thinnest. Dr. Grew observes, that by the figure it appears to have belonged to the leg, and not to the thigh, and he conjectures the whole elephant to have been about 5 yards high.
Gessner says, that he was presented by a Polish nobleman with a tooth, four times as large as that which he figured under the title of Hippopotamus, in his book de Aquatilibus. It was found under ground, in digging for the foundation of a house, together with a very large horn, as they called it, which many took to be a unicorn’s horn, but erroneously, as Gessner thought, because of its being too thick and too crooked. It is very probable that this pretended horn, was the dens exertus of an elephant. The same author mentions a subterraneous cavern near Elbingeroda, where were found the bones and teeth of men and animals so large, that it was scarcely credible that ever any of that bulky size should have existed.
The grinder of an elephant, petrified, is kept in the king of Denmark’s cabinet at Copenhagen, as appears by the catalogue, but no mention is made how it came thither, or where it was found.
In the same collection they show a large thigh-bone, which weighs about 20 Danish pounds, and is above 3 feet in length. It is so old, according to the author of the catalogue, that it is almost become stony. The same author mentions another large bone, then in the collection of Otho Sperling, which weighed 25 lb. and was 4 feet long, said to be found in the year 1643 at Bruges in Flanders, where was the whole skeleton, which was 20 yards of Brabant in length.
A piece of ivory was dug up in a field on the river Vistula, about 6 miles from Warsaw, which having been shown at Dantzic to Gabriel Rzaczynski, author of the Natural History of Poland, it seemed to him to be the dens exertus of an elephant.
In the notes on the last edition of Dr. Herman’s Cynosura Medica, published by Dr. Boeder of Strasburg, under the title of Unicornu Fossile, mention is made of a remarkable piece of fossil ivory, or rather of an elephant’s tooth, in the hands of Jaques Samson de Rathsamhausen de Ehenweyer, an Alsatian nobleman. It was found in the Rhine on one of his estates near Nonneville, and was 3 feet 3¼ inches in length, Paris measure. It was near a foot at the basis in circumference, where thickest, and about 8½ inches at the other extremity. It was filled within with a sort of marl; but the outer surface was stony in some places, and bony in others. The bony part scraped, or burnt, smelled like ivory. The scrapings boiled made a sort of jelly. The author of the notes adds, that they find fossil ivory in several parts of Europe, particularly in the Schwartzwald (Sylva Hercynia) in Moravia, in Saxony, and near Canstad in the duchy of Wirtemberg.
And first, as many of those bones and teeth, which are kept and shown about for bones and teeth of giants, have been found, on a more accurate inspection, to be only the bones and teeth of elephants or whales, it may from thence very probably be inferred, that others also, which for want of a sufficient description cannot be accurately enough accounted for, must have belonged either to these or to some other large animal. Thus, the fore fin of a whale, stripped of its web and skin, was not long since publicly shown for the bones of a giant’s hand; and Sir H. S. has in his own possession, No. 1027, the vertebra of the loin of a large whale, which was brought him from Oxfordshire, where he was assured it was found under ground, and afterwards used as a stool to sit on. Now if a computation had been made from the proportion of this vertebra to that of the other parts of the skeleton, and all had been supposed to have belonged to a man, such a skeleton would have exceeded in measure, all those fabulous skeletons of giants mentioned by authors.
Hence Sir H. S. observes, that it would be an object well worth the inquiries of ingenious anatomists, to make a sort of comparative anatomy of bones; to examine, with more accuracy than has been hitherto done, what proportions the skeletons and parts of skeletons of men and animals bear to each other, with regard either to the size, or figure, or structure, or any other quality. This would doubtless lead us to many discoveries, and is otherwise one of those things which seem to be wanting, to make anatomy a science still more perfect and complete. The very vertebra abovementioned may serve to show the usefulness of such observations. It differs in many things from the vertebrae of men and land-animals, as do the vertebrae of whales, and the fishes of the cetaceous kind in general; and it is a very easy matter to distinguish them from each other. The body of the vertebra is considerably larger in proportion, and also lighter and more porous. The transverse processes arise from the middle of it on each side. The oblique descending processes are altogether wanting; and the arch, or foramen, which the spinal marrow passes through, is made up by the spinal process and the oblique ascending ones only: the body of the vertebra is very rough and uneven on each end, full of small holes and eminences, which receive the holes and eminences of a round bone, or plate, which answers to the epiphysis in a human vertebra, of which there are two between each vertebra, joined together by an intermediate strong and pretty thick cartilage, probably to facilitate the motion, and particularly the flexion of these animals in the sea. But to return.
There are many skeletons, that have from time to time been found under ground, and are mentioned by authors, who speak of them as skeletons of giants, and undeniable monuments of their existence, which he rather takes to be the skeletons of elephants, whales, or some other huge land or sea animal. Of this kind seem to be the pretended skeletons of giants of 12, 20, and 30 cubits in height, mentioned by Philostratus; the skeleton of 46 cubits in height, which according to Pliny was found in the cavity of a mountain in Creta, on the overthrowing of that mountain by an earthquake; the skeleton 60 cubits high, which Strabo says, was found near Tingis, now Tangier, in Mauritania, and was supposed to have been the skeleton of Anteus; the skeleton of Pallas, as pretended, found at Rome in the year 1500, which was higher than the walls of that city; and likewise that, which Simon Majolus says, was found in England in the year 1171: “Long before Fulgosus’s time, upwards of 300 years, viz. anno 117 1 , by the overflowing of a river, a human skeleton was discovered in England, where the bones are still in their proper order: the length of the whole body was 50 feet.”
There are others, the description of which concludes more clearly for their having once belonged to elephants, though it could not be positively asserted, that they did. St. Austin, discoursing of the existence and great feats of the giants before the deluge, mentions in proof of what he advances, that he himself, with several others, saw at Utica, on the sea-shore, the grinder of a man so large, that if it had been cut into teeth of an ordinary size, at least 100 might have been made of it. Hieronymus Magius, though himself very much prejudiced in favour of the existence of giants, yet suspects this tooth, mentioned by St. Austin, to have been rather the tooth of an elephant, or else some huge creature of the sea, than that of a man. But Ludovicus Vives, in his commentaries on that passage of St. Austin, takes notice, that in the church of St. Christopher at Hispella, he was shown a tooth larger than his fist, which they pretended was one of the teeth of that huge saint, no doubt, on as good ground as that very large shoulder-bone, which Hieronymus Magius says was shown in a church at Venice, was the shoulder-bone of St. Christopher.
The pretended skeleton of a giant, which was found near Drapini, a castle in Sicily, on digging the foundation of a house, and is described by Joh. Boccatius, is again not unlikely to have been the skeleton of a large elephant. For though the greater part of the bones, through the length of time, and the force of the subterranean steams, were so rotten, that after being exposed to the air, they fell to pieces almost on touching, yet three of the teeth were found entire, which weighed 100 oz. and were by the inhabitants of Drapini hung up in one of their churches, to perpetuate the memory of this fact. They likewise found part of the skull, capacious enough to hold some bushels of corn, and one of the shank-bones, which was so large, that on comparing it with the shank-bone of an ordinary man, it was judged that this giant, whom some took to be Erick, others Ethellus, others one of the Cyclops, and again others the renowned Polyphemus himself, must have been 200 cubits high; according to which calculation, he is figured and represented by F. Kircher, as by far the largest of a whole gradation of giants, whom, after this, he places in the following order:
[in] Cubits.
- The giant of Strabo, whose skeleton was dug up near Tingis in Mauritania, and was found to be 60 high
- Pliny’s giant, found in a mountain in Creta 46
- The skeleton of Asterius, son of Anactes 10
- The skeleton of Orestes, dug up by special command of the oracle 7
- The giant, whose bones were found under a large oak, not far from the convent of Reyden, in the canton of Lucern in Swisserland 9
- Goliath, as described in sacred writ 6½
The case is still less doubtful with regard to those bones which were found in France in 1456, in the reign of Charles the 7th, by the side of a river in the barony of Crussole, not far from Valence. Johannes Marius in libris de Galliarum Illustrationibus, Calamasus in suis de Biturigibus Commentariis, Fulgosus in his Annals, et Joh. Cassanio of Monstroeuil, in his Treatise of Giants, severally take notice of these bones, which were so large, that the whole height of the giant, to whom it was thought they belonged, and who was supposed to have been the giant Briatus, was conjectured to have been of 15 cubits. The skull alone was 2 cubits thick, and the shoulder-bone 6 cubits broad. Sometime after, other bones of this kind were found in the same barony, near the same place, part of which Cassanio saw himself, and gives such a particular description of one of the teeth, as leaves little room to doubt, but that it was the grinder, and consequently the other bones, the bones of an elephant. His words arc to this effect: “I saw there several bones, among which was a tooth of a surprising size, 12 inches long, and weighing 8lb.; it was much longer than it was thick, and had some roots by which it was fastened in the jaw; the part by which the food was ground was 4 inches broad, and rather concave.” He adds further, that such another tooth was kept at Charmes, a neighbouring castle; that he measured the length of the place, whence these bones were dug, and found it to be 9 paces; that some time after, more bones were discovered at the same place, and that the country all thereabouts was very mountainous, and such as the giants in all probability delighted to dwell and command in. Sir Hans Sloane has seen some of these bones brought from this place, which he took to have belonged to an elephant, by some large cells between the tables of the skull, which are in the skull of that animal.
Hieronymus Magius gives an account of a very large skull, 11 spans in circumference, and some other bones, probably belonging to that skull, which were dug up near Tunis in Africa, by two Spanish slaves, as they were ploughing in afield. He was informed of this matter by Melchior Guilandinus, who saw the skull himself, when he had the misfortune to be taken by the Rovers, and carried into slavery to that place in the year 1559. Sir Hans Sloane is the more inclined to believe, that this skull and bones were part of the skeleton of an elephant, because a like large skeleton was dug up near the same place some time after, which by one of the teeth sent to Peiresk was made out to have been the skeleton of an elephant.
Sir H. Sloane now comes to those bones, teeth and tusks, or horns, as some call them, which are mentioned by authors to have been dug up in divers parts of the world, and have been made out by them, or otherwise appear by their description and figures, indisputably to belong to the elephant. Johannes Goropius Becanus, though he lived in an age when the stories of giants were very much credited, and had found their advocates, even among persons eminent for their learning and judgment, yet ventured to assert, that the tooth which was kept and shown at Antwerp, as the tooth of that unmerciful giant, whose defeat, brought about as they pretended by Brabo a son of Julius Caesar, and king of the Arcadians, was fabulously reputed to have given occasion to the building of that castle and city, was nothing but the grinder of an elephant. However displeasing this assertion might be, as Goropius further adds, to those who are delighted with such idle and ridiculous stories, yet to the judicious it will appear the less surprising, on account of what passed not long before he wrote this book, when the almost entire skeletons of two elephants, with the grinders, and likewise the dentes exerti, or tusks, were found near Wielworda, Vilvorden, as they were digging a canal from Brussels to the river Rupel, to defend that town and country from the incursions of those of Mechlen. Goropius conjectures, that these elephants had been brought thither by the Romans, at the time either of the emperor Galien, or Posthumus.
A very large skeleton, likewise of a giant, as pretended, was dug up near Tunis in Africa, about the year 1630, of which one Thomas d’Arcos, who was then at that place, sent an account, together with one of the teeth, to the learned Peiresk. The skull was so large, that it contained eight meilleroles (a measure of wine in Provence) or one modius, as Gassendus calls it, or a pint and a half Paris measure. Sometime after a live elephant having been shown at Toulon, Peiresk ordered, that he should be brought to his country seat, on purpose to take that opportunity to examine the teeth of the creature, the impressions of which he caused to be taken in wax, and thus found, that the pretended giant’s tooth sent him from Tunis, was only the grinder of an elephant. This is the second large skeleton dug up near Tunis in Africa, and it appearing plainly by the tooth sent to Peiresk, that it was the skeleton of an elephant, it may from thence very probably be conjectured, some other circumstances concurring, that the other also, which Guilandinus saw there, must have been rather of an elephant than of a giant.
Thomas Bartholin mentions the grinder, or maxillar-tooth, of an elephant, which was dug up in Iceland, and sent to him by Petrus Kesenius. It was turned to a perfect stony substance, like flint, as was also the tusk of a rosmarus, dug up in the same island.
A large tooth, which by its shape appears plainly to be the grinder of an elephant, is described and figured by Lambecius, who had it out of the emperor’s library, though he could not be informed where it was found, or how it got thither. It weighed 28 ounces, and was commonly taken to be the tooth of a giant. Antonius de Pozzis, chief physician to the emperor, in a letter to Lambecius, affirms it to be an elephant’s tooth, and conjectures, that it was dug up at Baden, about 4 miles from Vienna, where, but a few years before he wrote this letter, they had found also the os tibiae et femoris of an elephant.
Another tooth, probably of an elephant too, is described and figured by Lambecius, who had it out of the emperor’s library. It weighed 23 ounces and was found in the year 1644 at Krembs, in the lower Austria, on increasing the fortifications of that place.
The year following, when the Swedes came to besiege the town of Krembs, a whole skeleton of a giant, as was pretended, was found at the top of a neighbouring mountain, near an old Tower. The besiegers, in their intrenchments there, being very much incommoded by the water that came down from the mountains, dug a ditch 3 or 4 fathoms deep, to lead it another way. In digging this ditch they found that skeleton, which was much admired for its unusual size. Many of the bones, chiefly those of the head, fell to pieces on being exposed to the air; others were broken by the carelesness of the workmen; some escaped entire, and were sent to learned men in Poland and Sweden. Among these was a shoulder-bone, with an acetabulum in it, large enough to hold a cannon-ball. The head, with regard to its bulk, was compared to a round table, and the bones of the arms, or fore-legs, as thick as a man of an ordinary size. One of the grinders, weighing 5 pounds, was given to the Jesuits at Krembs: another is figured by Happelius (in his Relationes Curiosae, tom. 4, p. 47, 48,) and it appears plainly by the figure of it, that it is an elephant’s tooth. It weighed 4lb. 3 oz. Nuremberg weight.
Again, in Lambecius’s Bibliotheca Qesarea Vindobonensis, are two figures, and the description of a very large elephant’s tooth, which weighed 4¾ lb. It was sent from Constantinople to Vienna in 1678. They pretended that it was found near Jerusalem, in a spacious subterranean cavern, in the grave of a giant, which had the following inscription on it in the Chaldaic language and characters; “ Here lies the giant OG;” whence it was conjectured to have been the tooth of Og, king of Basan, who was defeated by Moses, and who “only remained of the remnants of giants; whose bedstead was of iron, 9 cubits was the length thereof, and 4 cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”
Hieronymus Ambrosius Langenmantel, a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, inserted into the Ephemerides of that Academy, an abstract of a letter to himself, from Johannes Ciampini in Rome, concerning some very large bones, viz. the shank- bone, the shoulder-bone, and 5 vertebrae, one of which was a vertebra of the neck, which were dug up near Vitorchiani, in the bishopric of Viterbo, in the year 1687. They weighed altogether upwards of 1 SO Roman pounds; and having been compared with the other like bones in several collections at Rome, particularly the Chisian, they appeared to be by far the largest Most people took them to be the bones of a giant, but Ciampini, and some others, taking them, with more probability, for the bones of an elephant, or some other large animal, and knowing that there was in the Medicean collection at Florence a complete skeleton of an elephant, they procured a copy of it, and found on comparison, the abovementioned bones so exactly to correspond with it, as to leave no room to doubt, but that they had been part of an elephant’s skeleton.
The skeleton of an elephant, which was dug up in a sand pit near Tonna in Thuringen, in 1695, is one of the most curious, and the most complete in its kind; as they found the whole head, with 4 grinders, and the two dentes exerti, or tusks, the bones of the fore and hind-legs, one of the shoulder-bones, the back-bones, with the ribs, and several of the vertebrae of the neck. But the whole has been so accurately described by Wilhelmus Ernestus Tentzelius, Historiographer to the dukes of Saxony, in a letter to the learned Magliabechi, printed in the Philos. Trans. No. 234, that it is needless to add any thing, the rather, as that gentleman obliged the Royal Society with some pieces of the bones of this elephant, with part of the skull, in which appeared its cells, some of the grinders, and part of the dentes exerti; all which being produced at a meeting of the Royal Society, were found exactly agreeable to his description, and ordered to be carefully preserved in their repository. From the surface of the ground, down to the place where these bones were found, the diposition of the strata was as follows: a black soil 4 feet deep, gravel 2½ feet, the middle of which consisted of osteocolla and stones to the depth of 2 feet, osteocolla and stones half a foot, a sandy clay 6 feet, with about 2 inches of osteocolla in the middle, osteocolla and pebbles 1 foot, gravel 6 feet, a white and fine sand, of unknown depth, in which the bones were found.
In vol. 2, of Count Marsili’s Danubius, where he treats of the antiquities he observed along this river, mention is made of several bones and teeth of elephants, which that inquisitive nobleman met with in Hungary and Transylvania, and which are now in his valuable collection of natural and artificial curiosities at Bologna. According to the best information, the people of whom he had them could give him, they were found in rivers, lakes, and pools. One of the vertebrae, a grinder, and a considerable part of the dens exertus, or tusk, were found in the lake, or pool of Hiulca. Two fragments of the os tibiae, a little corroded on the inside, were taken out of a pool near Fogheras in Transylvania once the seat of the princes of that country; and the whole lower jaw, with two grinders as yet sticking in it, were found in the standing waters by the river Tibiscus, a little above die Romer skantz, or the Roman fort.
Above was related the opinion of Goropius on the antiquity of those two elephants, whose skeletons were found near Vilvorden, which he traces no higher than the time of the Romans, and their expeditions into those countries, particularly under Galien and Posthumus. Count Marsili is of the same opinion, with regard to the bones and teeth found by him in Transylvania. He takes notice, that whoever is acquainted with the great use the Romans made of elephants in their military expeditions, ought not to be surprised that bones and teeth of them are found in those northern countries, where otherwise there cannot have been any; and he urges, as a further proof of this assertion, that they are found in pools and lakes, it having been the custom of the Romans, to throw the carcases of dead elephants into the water, as it is still practised to this day with the carcases of horses and other beasts, to prevent the distempers and other inconveniencies, which their putrefaction might otherwise occasion. On the other hand, there are many arguments, taken from the size of the beasts, whose skeletons are thus found under ground, which sometimes far exceeds any that was, or could have been brought alive into Europe, from the condition they are found in, and from the particular disposition of the strata above the places where they are found; by which it appears, almost to a demonstration, that they must be of much greater antiquity, and that they cannot have been buried at the places where they are found, or brought thither any otherwise, than by the force of the waters of a universal deluge. To insist only on one of these arguments: if the skeletons of elephants, which are thus found under ground, and at considerable depths too, had been buried there, either by the Romans, or any other nation, the strata above them must necessarily have been broken through and altered; whereas, on the contrary, several observations inform us, that they were found entire; whence it appears, that what is found underneath, must have been lodged there, if not before, at least at the very time when these strata were formed; consequently long before the Romans.
But there is another argument, which seems to bear very hard against the conjectures of Goropius and Count Marsili. Tentzelius has already mentioned it, and it is urged from the great value of ivory at all times, and particularly among the Romans, which appears by many passages in antient authors; as for instance, by a very remarkable one in Pliny, lib. 12, c. 4, who takes notice, that among the valuable presents, which the Ethiopians were obliged to make to the kings of Persia, by way of a tribute, there were 20 large teeth (doubtless the dentes exerti) of elephants, and then adds, Tanta ebori auctoritas erat. Now it is to be presumed, that the Romans would not have neglected to take away the teeth, and particularly the dentes exerti of dead elephants, before they flung their carcases into the water, whereas there has scarcely been any skeleton, or any part of the skeleton of an elephant dug up any where, but the teeth were found along with them, and even among those figured by Count Marsili, there are three grinders, and a considerable part of one of the dentes exerti.
Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, says, That he was presented by William Leveson Gower of Trentham, Esq. with the lower jaw of some animal, with large teeth sticking in it, dug up in a marl pit in his ground, and which, on comparison, he found exactly agreeable to the lower jaw of the elephant’s skull in Mr. Ashmole’s Museum at Oxford.
In the Museum of the Royal Society there are two fossil-bones of elephants: one was given by Sir Thomas Brown of Norwich, the other was brought from Syria for the os tibiae of a giant; but Dr. Grew proves by an exact computation, that it can never have been the os tibiae of a human skeleton, by being full 20 times as thick, and but 3 times as long. It is 42 inches long, and 12 in circumference, where it is thinnest. Dr. Grew observes, that by the figure it appears to have belonged to the leg, and not to the thigh, and he conjectures the whole elephant to have been about 5 yards high.
Gessner says, that he was presented by a Polish nobleman with a tooth, four times as large as that which he figured under the title of Hippopotamus, in his book de Aquatilibus. It was found under ground, in digging for the foundation of a house, together with a very large horn, as they called it, which many took to be a unicorn’s horn, but erroneously, as Gessner thought, because of its being too thick and too crooked. It is very probable that this pretended horn, was the dens exertus of an elephant. The same author mentions a subterraneous cavern near Elbingeroda, where were found the bones and teeth of men and animals so large, that it was scarcely credible that ever any of that bulky size should have existed.
The grinder of an elephant, petrified, is kept in the king of Denmark’s cabinet at Copenhagen, as appears by the catalogue, but no mention is made how it came thither, or where it was found.
In the same collection they show a large thigh-bone, which weighs about 20 Danish pounds, and is above 3 feet in length. It is so old, according to the author of the catalogue, that it is almost become stony. The same author mentions another large bone, then in the collection of Otho Sperling, which weighed 25 lb. and was 4 feet long, said to be found in the year 1643 at Bruges in Flanders, where was the whole skeleton, which was 20 yards of Brabant in length.
A piece of ivory was dug up in a field on the river Vistula, about 6 miles from Warsaw, which having been shown at Dantzic to Gabriel Rzaczynski, author of the Natural History of Poland, it seemed to him to be the dens exertus of an elephant.
In the notes on the last edition of Dr. Herman’s Cynosura Medica, published by Dr. Boeder of Strasburg, under the title of Unicornu Fossile, mention is made of a remarkable piece of fossil ivory, or rather of an elephant’s tooth, in the hands of Jaques Samson de Rathsamhausen de Ehenweyer, an Alsatian nobleman. It was found in the Rhine on one of his estates near Nonneville, and was 3 feet 3¼ inches in length, Paris measure. It was near a foot at the basis in circumference, where thickest, and about 8½ inches at the other extremity. It was filled within with a sort of marl; but the outer surface was stony in some places, and bony in others. The bony part scraped, or burnt, smelled like ivory. The scrapings boiled made a sort of jelly. The author of the notes adds, that they find fossil ivory in several parts of Europe, particularly in the Schwartzwald (Sylva Hercynia) in Moravia, in Saxony, and near Canstad in the duchy of Wirtemberg.
Source: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Abridged, vol. VII (London: 1809), 240-247, 255-264.
