VOL. XXVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 5gj 



By the opportunity I have had of preparing and joining these bonejs, it may 

 be expected I should give some account of their structure : but as the design 

 of preserving the skeleton entire gave me no liberty to go any further than 

 their external surface, so it cannot be expected I could dive any deeper in the 

 knowledge of them. Tentzelius says, omnia isthaec ossa porosa sunt et rimosa ; 

 and I may add, levia too : for there is nothing about them to be seen of that so- 

 lidity and compactness, that smoothness of surface, and whiteness, which is 

 observable in other quadrupeds of the larger size, such as oxen, horses, harts, 

 &c. or smaller, as sheep, dogs, cats, &c. And I should have readily attributed 

 this to the youth of the animal, had not Tentzelius from his subject, supposed 

 to be 200 years old, told the same. And this differs much from the account of 

 the Behemoth in Job, whose bones are said to be as strong pieces of brass, and 

 bars of iron. The laminae of the head were thin and solid ; the external table 

 thin and more ponderous ; the teeth exceedingly solid and ponderous : so that 

 from the computation of the weight of the upper part, which was taken off by 

 the saw, which is only 61b. weight, I may reckon all the head, which weighs 

 661b. beside the teeth, not to weigh above 24lb. at most ; which well agrees 

 with what Tentzelius says, that each of the dentes molares were 12lb. weight, 

 and that of all the 45lb. which the lower jaw weighs, the rest of the bone be- 

 side the grinders do not exceed 12 or l61b. For its external surface seems to 

 be both porous and rimous ; and at perforating the condyles seemed to be very 

 spongy, as were the ribs, femur, tibia, &c. where, after the drill had passed 

 the external lamina, which was very thin, it would have run forward as if it 

 had been through so much moss. When the epiphysis came off the thigh 

 bone, it resembled very much the epiphysis of the femur in man ; its minute 

 cellules were not so large as those of an ox, and the laminae which circum- 

 scribed them, not by much so solid. The humerus indeed, both above and 

 below, was much harder ; it heated the drill in passing : and there may be 

 some reason for that too ; viz. that since the progression of most quadrupeds 

 chiefly depends upon a more frequent motion of the fore than hind limbs, it 

 does much more here, where the head is proportionably heavier than in other 

 animals. And this perhaps is the reason too, why the fore limbs in this animal 

 are brought so far forward ; for measuring in a straight line from the humerus 

 above to th^e carpus below, and bringing another line directly backward at the 

 articulatioii between the humerus and cubitus, from the perpendicular line before 

 to the point of the olecranon behind, it is 20 inches ; which is the reason why 

 some believe my engraver has made the fore limbs of the skeleton to bend too 

 much at the articulation. The bones of the carpus are pretty solid, and by 

 perforation they seem only to have a little spongiosity about the middle : all the 



