Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 61 



minish in every respect before falling, and equally ignorant 

 of the great difference between the teeth of young and old 

 individuals, have imagined that the small teeth which are 

 found isolated proceed from an elephant of a much smaller 

 species. 



But by far the most serious errors are those which have 

 been occasioned by the partial laminae of the germs of ele- 

 phants' teeth which have been found detached and not at all 

 worn. 



The antient naturalists, who generally considered fossils 

 as figured stones, found in these laminae some resemblance 

 to a foot or a hand, and gave them the name of chir'ites. 



Kircher represents some of them under this name in his 

 Jdundus suhterraneus, ii. 64. There are also similar ones 

 in his museum, and in the Mtiseum metalliciim Faticanum 

 of Mercati. 



Aldrovaudus describes them by the same name, De Me- 

 tall. lib. iv. 481. 



But nothing of this kind approaches what we find in the 

 Rariora Natune et Artis of Kundman, PI. III. fig. 2. This 

 author describes the object represented by his figure as the 

 petrijied skull of some great baboon ; he asserts that the 

 skin, the flesh, the nails, and the veins, were to be seen ia 

 it entirely petrified ; that M. Fischer, professor at Konigs- 

 berg, who had seen the greatest part of the cabinets iu Eu- 

 rope, regarded this petrifaction as one of the most singular 

 in the world : and, lastly, that the king of Poland, when 

 elector of Saxony, had offered him a considerable sum in 

 order to place it in the cabinet of Dresden. JValch, in his 

 commentary upon the work of Knorr, tom. ii. § 2. j). 150, 

 quotes this rarity among the osteulithes of the ape, &c. A 

 single glance, however, thrown upon, the figure will show 

 that it is merely a lamina of an elephant's toolh not yet 

 worn at its extremity, nor soldered to the rest of the tooth. 



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