326 RHINOCEROS. 
“News from Chartham in Kent.—Although it may, 
and perhaps must be granted, that miracles (strictly un- 
derstood) are long since ceased; yet in the latitude of 
the notion, comprehending all things uncouth and strange, 
(miranda, as well as miracula; wonders as well as miracles, ) 
they are not so; but do, more or less, somewhere or other 
dayly exert and shew themselves, Dies diem docet.” After 
a fling at the “ New lights that are now-a-days much 
cried up,” and leaving these “ spiritual mountebanks and 
their counterfeit ware,’—a race still far from being ex- 
tinct,—the worthy ‘ Register’ proceeds “to the matter-of- 
fact then.” 
“ Mr. John Somner, in the month of September, 1668, 
sinking a well at a new house of his in Chartham, a vil- 
lage about three miles from Canterbury, towards Ash- 
ford, on a shelying ground or bankside, within twelve rods 
of the river, running from thence to Canterbury and to 
Sandwich Haven; and, digging for that purpose about 
seventeen feet deep, through gravelly and chalky ground 
and two feet into the sprmgs; there met with, took, and 
turned up a parcel of strange and monstrous bones, some 
whole, some broken, together with four teeth, perfect 
and sound, but in a manner petrified and turned into 
stone, weighing (each tooth) something above half a pound, 
and almost as big, some of them, as a man’s fist.” 
Alluding to the notices of the remains of giants which 
were current in the philosophical and other works of the time, 
the author judiciously remarks :—‘‘ And so we must have 
judged of these teeth and of the body to which they be- 
longed ; had not other bones been found with them, which 
could not be man’s bones.” ‘‘ Seme that have seen them,” 
he proceeds to say, “by the teeth and some other cir- 
cumstances, are of opinion, that they are the bones of 
