S56 Reinarhs on Men oft gigafitic SlalnrC' 



several other Romans of equal stature are tcportcd to have 

 lived in the reign of" Augusta?, &c. Accounts are contained 

 in the Philosophical Transactions, ot" human skeletons dug 

 up in England, mea<urin<i cisiht and nine t'cet in length, 

 which probably were Konian. Credible relations among the 

 inoderns arc likc\Aise to be found, of men and women fully 

 equal in size to anv of the anticnts whose existence can be 

 verified 5 although I think no credit can be attached to tlic 

 fabulous and contradictor}' stories of the Patagonian people, 

 who have been reprcHented as a nation of giants. A com- 

 niissarv on board Le Maire's fleet afliruied that he had mea- 

 sured the bones of men, in sepulchres of South America, 

 between eleven and twelve feet higli ; and 'i'urncr, the na- 

 turalist, declares that he had seen on the Brazil coast a race 

 of very gigantic savages, one of whom measm'ed t\\elvo 

 feet. The declaration of Turner is, moreover, rendered 

 credible by monsieur Thevet, who, in his description of 

 America, published at Paris 157.5, tells us he saw and mea- 

 sured the skeleton of a SovUh American, then not many 

 years dead, which was eleven feet five inches in length; his 

 skull was three feet one inch in circumference, and tbc leg- 

 bones full three fe^-tfour inches long. To these remarkable 

 instances may be added a well-proportioned living man, 

 whom Diemerbroeck saw at Utrecht, measuring eight feet 

 six inches, and whh is likcv.-isc mentioned by Mr. Ray. 

 Also a youth, seen by Dr. Eecamus, who was nearly nuie 

 feet high; a man almost ten feet, and a woman quite ten 

 feet. Among our own countrymen may be named Walter 

 Parsons, porter to king James tbc first, about seven feet 

 seven inches in stature; and Edward Malone (or Melloon), 

 whom Dr. Molyneux and Dr. Musgrave have described, of 

 the same height, A. D. 1682 — 5. In the forty-first and 

 Ibrty-sccond volumes of the Philosophical Transactions are 

 two engravings takei^i fVom an os frontis and auos brcgmatis, 

 the former of which is reckoned to have belonged to a per- 

 son between eleven and twelve feet high, the other to a giant 

 of thirteen feet four inches ; but no history is given of the 

 other bones of these skeletons. The Cliinesc pretend to 

 h.ave had men among then:i even so prodigious as fifteen feet 

 liigh ! ' Perhaps these relations are no better founded than 

 their chronological fables. However, 1 nov/ shall subjoin 

 a Short account of Mr. O'JBricn, the Irishman who has 

 lately been exhibited in London, and who pretends, in his 

 priiitcd advertisements, to be nearly ii'nic feet high. 



I visited tlr.s Irishman on the fifth of iS-lay, 1801', at No. 

 1 1, IJaymarket : he v/us of a very extraordinary stature, but 



not 



