VOL. XXXV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 245 



banished into Siberia, got their livelihood by turning snuff-boxes out of these 

 teeth; and in another place he mentions them among the Siberian commodi- 

 ties, of which the Czar has the monopoly. 



The accounts hitherto given of these maman-bones and teeth, or at least 

 their most essential parts, are confirmed by a letter of Basilius Tatischow, 

 director general of the mines in Siberia, and counsellor of the Czar's metallic 

 council, written to the learned Ericus Tenzelius, now bishop of Gothenburg, 

 and printed in the Acta Literaria Sueciag (m.dcc.xxv. Trimestre Secundum, 

 p. 36.) where he mentions the following pieces he had in his own possession : a 

 large horn, as he calls it, or tooth, weighing 183 pounds, which he had the 

 honour to present to his Czarish majesty, and is now kept in the Czar's col- 

 lection of curiosities at Petersburg ; another large horn, which he presented to 

 the Imperial Academy at Petersburg ; another still larger than either of these 

 two, which he caused to be cut, and carved himself several things of it, the 

 ivory being very good ; part of the skull, corrupted by having lain in the 

 ground, and so large, that it seemed to him to be of the same size with the 

 skull of a great elephant ; the forehead in particular was very thick, and had an 

 excrescence on each side, where the horns are usually fixed; which excrescence 

 however, as the author observes, was so small, as to make him doubtful, 

 whether there was ever any horns fixed to them. The cavity, where the brain 

 was lodged, was exceedingly small in proportion to the bulk of the skull. He 

 had found also a spongy bone, of 18 inches in length, and 3 inches in breadth, 

 fixed to the skull, and of a conical figure, whence he conjectured, that it served 

 to support one of the horns, which is observed also in other animals that bear 

 horns: lastly a grinder, which was 10 inches in length, and 6 in breadth, be- 

 sides several of the ribs, shank-bones, and other bones found from time to 

 time, which the author forbore mentioning. The same author has taken no 

 small pains to inquire into the true state of those pits and hollows which the 

 pagan inhabitants of Siberia say these animals make, when they walk under 

 ground, and found that they were nothing but caverns, such as are common in 

 other mountainous countries, and are owing to the force of subterranean rivers 

 and cataracts, which at last eat through and undermine the places where they 

 pass, so as to make the ground above them give way and sink in. 



Sir Hans adds one observation of Cornelius le Brun, who in his Travels 

 through Russia to the East Indies, tells us. that in the neighbourhood of 

 Veronitz they had found several elephants teeth on the surface of the ground, 

 which no person could tell how they came there, and that the Czar's opinion 

 about them was, that Alexander the Great, when he passed the Tanais, or Don, 

 advanced as far as Kostinka, a small town 8 wersts from thence, and that pro- 



