370 On some Quadrupeds supposed to be extinct, 



historical relations with the locality of fossil remains. It is 

 offered for the consideration of the reader, not in a spirit of 

 controversy, but with a desire to ascertain an important truth 

 in natural history, whether his speculations be confirmed or 

 refuted. Whichever way a decision is awarded, it will add to 

 the interest attached to zoological pursuits, and the reader will 

 be, by these remarks, enabled to form a judgment whether the 

 laborious and ingenious works which have been published, since 

 the conviction that elephants are not human giants, (a notion 

 seriously maintained so recently as in Clavegero's History of 

 Mexico, written since that of Robertson) are descriptions of the 

 quadrupeds of a former world, or of the world which is now in 

 existence. It is necessary to remark that these particular re- 

 searches relate only to animals connected with Roman and 

 Mogul history ; and if it should be conceded that it may justly 

 be inferred, that quadrupeds hitherto deemed extinct are still 

 to be found in the undiscovered parts of Africa, Asia, and Ame- 

 rica, not half of either region being yet scientifically known, it 

 will give an interest to zoology and osteology ten fold more 

 attractive than a blank and unsatisfactory hypothesis of their 

 having all perished before the creation of man, as is often 

 alleged. It is perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in lite- 

 rature, that naturalists so rarely allude to the astonishing number 

 of beasts slain in the Roman games, although the list of them 

 is, generally speaking, so similar to that of the fossil remains. 

 Erroneous notions concerning fossil bones, those of elephants, 

 in particular, being the most plentiful, began in very early ages 

 when they were considered to be human ; and James the First 

 (of Britain) sent Lord Herbert of Cherbury to Gloucester, to 

 ascertain if a skeleton, dug up at that place, was really that of 

 a giant. There were found mingled with it horns and bones of 

 oxen and sheep, and the tusks of a boar. Lord Herbert, 

 Dr. Clayton, and the celebrated Harvey, thought the bones 

 were those of one of the Roman elephants ; and Bishop Haker 

 will received a letter from my lord of Gloucester, mentioning 

 that " he was not confident that the grinder was the tooth of a 

 man*." This discovery, perhaps, put an end in England to 

 the notion of giants' bones. 



* Hakewill's Apology, p. 229. 



