364 PLINY'S NATUEAL HISTOKT. [Book IX. 



Santones; 27 among the rest there were elephants 28 and rams, 

 which last, however, had only a white spot to represent horns. 

 Turranius has also left accounts of several nereids, and he 

 speaks of a monster 29 that was thrown up on the shore at 

 Gades, the distance between the two fins at the end of the tail 

 of which was sixteen cubits, and its teeth one hundred and 

 twenty in number ; the largest being nine, and the smallest 

 six inches in length. 



M. Scaurus, in his aedileship, exhibited at Rome, among other 

 wonderful things, the bones of the monster to which Andro- 

 meda was said to have been exposed, and which he had brought 

 from Joppa, a city of Judsea. These bones exceeded forty feet 

 in length, and the ribs were higher than those of the Indian 

 elephant, while the back-bone was a foot and a half 30 in thick- 

 ness. 



See B. iv. c. 33. 



28 Dalechamps says that this elephant is the same as the " rosmarus " of 

 Olaus Magnus, B. xxxii. c. 11. It is remarked by Cuvier, that cetaceous 

 animals have at all times received the names of those belonging to the land. 

 The sea-ram, he thinks, may have been the great dolphin, which is called 

 the " bootskopf," and which has above the eye a white spot, curved in nearly 

 a similar manner to the horn of a ram. The " elephant," again, he suggests, 

 may have been the Trichechus rosmarus of Linnaeus, or the morse, which 

 has large tusks projecting from its mouth, similar to those of the elephant. 

 This animal, however, as he says, is confined to the northern seas, and does 

 not appear ever to have come so far south as our coasts. Juha and Pau- 

 sanias, however, speak of these horns of the sea-ram as being really teeth 

 or tusks. 



29 Judging from the account of it here given, and especially in relation 

 to the teeth, Cuvier is inclined to think that the cachelot whale, the Phy- 

 seter macrocephalus of Linnaeus, is the animal here alluded to. 



30 Solinus, generally a faithful mimic of Pliny, makes the measure only 

 half a foot. Cuvier says that there can be little doubt that the bones re- 

 presented to have been those of the monster to which Andromeda was ex- 

 posed, were the bones, and more especially the lower jaws, of the whale. 

 Ajasson certainly appears to have mistaken "the sense of this passage. He 

 says that it must not be supposed that Pliny means the identical bones of 

 the animal which was about to devour Andromeda, but of one of the ani- 

 mals of that kind ; and he exercises his wit at the expense of those who 

 would construe the passage differently, in saying that these bones ought to 

 have been sent to those who show in their collections such articles as the 

 knife with which Cain slew Abel. Now, there can be no doubt that these 

 bones were not those of the monster which the poets tell us was about to 

 devour Andromeda ; but the Eomans certainly supposed that they were, 

 and Pliny evidently thought so too, for in B.'v. c. 14, he speaks of the 

 chains by which she was fastened to the rock, at Joppa, as still to be seen 

 there. M. ^milius Scaurus, the younger, is here referred to. 



