180 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1727. 



Jn Account of a Pair of extraordinary large Horns found in Jlapping. Bu 

 Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. P. R. S. N° 397, p. 221. 



Many years since, Mr. Doyly, a great searcher after curiosities, found a pair 

 of extraordinary large and strangely shaped horns, in a warehouse at Wapping, 

 where they had suffered much by worms and otherwise, being eaten pretty deep 

 on their surfaces, in many places. They had lain there so long, that when he 

 bought them, no one could inform him whence they came, or when or how 

 they had been lodged there. They resembled in several things the horns of 

 goats, which made many people think that they had belonged to an animal of 

 that kind, in all likelihood as large as the moose-deer in America is of its kind. 

 The Royal Society being informed of this matter, Mr. Hunt, their operator at that 

 time, made a draught of them, on which Dr. Hook read a lecture at a meeting 

 of the Society at Gresham College. This lecture and the draught are lost ; but 

 it is remembered that he suspected them to be the horns of the sukotyro, as 

 the Chinese call it, or sucotario, a very large and odd-shaped beast, mentioned 

 and figured by NieuhofF, in his Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, where 

 he gives the following description of it : " It is of the size of a large ox, with 

 a snout like a hog, two long rough ears, and a thick bushy tail. The eyes are 

 placed upright in the head, quite difl^erent from other beasts; on the side of the 

 head next to the eyes stand two long horns, or rather teeth, not quite so thick 

 as those of the elephant. It feeds upon herbage, and is but seldom taken." 



Both are nearly straight for a considerable length, and then turning crooked, 

 they run on tapering towards a small and pretty sharp end. They are not round, 

 but compressed and flattish, and have large transverse sulci, or furrows, on their 

 surfaces, waved or undulated on their under parts. They differ a little in size. 

 Measuring one (fig. 1, pi. 4) from the great end, or basis, ab, where it was 

 fixed to the head, along the outer circumference, he found the length acd to 

 be 6 feet, Q^ inches, the length by the line bd 4 feet 5J- inches, the diameter 

 of the basis ab Q\ inches, and its circumference 17 inches. This weighed 21 lb. 

 10 oz. and contained in the hollow part exactly 5 quarts of water. In the other 

 (fig. 2) the length of the outer circumference acd was 6 feet 4 inches, the line 

 BD 4 feet 7 inches, the diameter of the basis 7 inches, and its circumference 

 18 inches. This weighed 21 lb. J3J- oz. and contained in the hollow part 4-1- 

 quarts ; but would have held more, had it not been very much broken at the 

 large end. 



The commander of an East India merchant ship, on seeing them, told Sir 

 Hans Sloane, that he had seen such in the Indies on a large bufialo's head. Sir 

 Hans is inclined to think, that they must belong to a very large sort of bull's 



