244 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, [aNNO 1728. 



those which are found in good case, are as good as ivory, and are accordingly 

 transported to all parts of Muscovy. The abovementioned person also told 

 ine, that he once found two teeth in one head, that weighed above 12 Russian 

 pounds, which amounts to 400 German pounds ; so that these animals must 

 be of necessity very large, though a great many lesser teeth are found. By 

 all that I could gather from the heathens, there is no person ever saw one of 

 these beasts alive, or can give any account of its shape." 



What E. Ysbrant Ides observes of those teeth that are black and broken, 

 may serve as a comment to the following passage of Pliny, lib. xxxvi, c. 18 : 

 Theophrastus autor est, et ebur fossile candido et nigro colore inveniri, et ossa 

 e terra nasci, invenirique lapides osseos. Lawrence Lang, in the Journal of 

 his Travels to China, takes notice of these bones, as being found about the 

 river Jenisei, and towards Mangasea, along the banks, and in the hollows oc- 

 casioned by the fall of the earth. He calls them maman-bones, and informs 

 us, that some of the inhabitants are of opinion, that they are no real bones, 

 teeth, &c. but a sort of cornu fossile, that grows in the earth, and that others 

 will have them to be the bones of the Behemoth, mentioned in the 40th 

 chapter of Job, the description of which they pretend fits the nature of the 

 beast, whose bones and teeth they are imagined to be, those supposed words, 

 in particular, that he is caught with his own eyes, agreeing with the Siberian 

 tradition, that the maman beast dies on coming to light. The same author 

 affirms, from the report, as he says, of credible people, that there have been 

 sometimes found horns, jaw-bones and ribs, with fresh flesh and blood stick- 

 ing to them. The same is confirmed by John Bernard Muller, in his account 

 of the Ostiacks, who adds, that the horns in particular have been found some- 

 times all bloody at the broken end, which is generally hollow, and filled with 

 a matter like concreted blood ; that they find, together with these teeth, or 

 horns, as he calls them, the skull and jaw-bones, with the grinders still fixed 

 in them, all of a monstrous size ; and that he himself, with some of his 

 friends, has seen a grinder weighing more than 24 lb.; that the inhabitants 

 make divers things of these teeth, and that they are mostly to be met with in 

 the coldest places of Siberia, as for instance, Jakutsky, Beresowa, Mangasea, 

 and Ohder.* He likewise gives the description of one of these animals, from 

 the accounts of several persons, who assured him, that they had seen them in 

 the caverns of the high mountains beyond Beresowa : but as this description 

 has very much the appearance of a fable, it is not inserted here. The author 

 of the present state of Russia observes, that some of the Swedish prisoners 



* On this subject the reader is referred to tJie accounts given by some late travellers into Siberia, 

 and particularly to the accounts given by Gnielin and Pallas. 



