38 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Britain. . . . One there was 'tis true sent hither as a 

 Present by St. Lewis IX., King of France to King Henry 

 III. Anno 1255, which, says Matthew Paris, was the first 

 seen this side of the Alps, and perhaps there may have been 

 two or three brought for Show hither since : but whether 

 it be likely any of these should have been buried at Corn- 

 welllet the Reader judge." 



A point is made of the fact that tusks had not been 

 found associated with the supposed elephant's bones, a piece 

 of negative evidence, the worthlessness of which is shown 

 by the subsequent discovery of such tusks. 



Instances are then given of the exhumation of similar 

 bones from churchyards. " Since the great Conflagration of 

 London, Anno 1666, upon the pulling down of St. Mary 

 Wool-Church, and making the site of it into a Market- 

 place there was found a Thigh-bone (supposed to be of a 

 Woman) which was to be seen at the Kings Head Tavern 

 at Greenwich in Kent, much bigger and longer than ours of 

 Stone could in proportion be, had it been entire." Two 

 other similar bones were dug up in the parish churchyard 

 of Merton Valence. " Now," exclaims our author in triumph, 

 "how Elephants should come to be buried in Churches, is a 

 Question not easily answered, except we will run to so 

 groundless a shift, as to say, that possibly the Elephants 

 might be there buried before Christianity florished in Britain 

 and that these Churches were afterwards casually built over 

 them." 



It is possible that the thigh bone in which Dr. Plot was 

 so much interested was not that of an elephant, for he says : 

 " But what is instar omnium in this difficult point, there 

 happily came to Oxford while I was writing of this, a living 

 Elephant to be shewn publickly at the Act, An. 1676, with 

 whose Bones and Teeth} I compared ours : and found 

 those of the Elephant not only a different Shape, but also 

 incomparably bigger than ours, though the Beast were very 

 young and not half grown." 



The conclusion follows that the thigh bone is human 



1 The teeth were evidently those of a ruminant. 



