■250 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1728. 



and complete. The very vertebra abovementioned may serve to show the use- 

 fulness of such observations. It differs in many things from the vertebras of 

 men and land-animals, as do the vertebrae of whales, and the fishes of the 

 cetaceous kind in general; and it is a very easy matter to distinguish them from 

 each other. The body of the vertebra is considerably larger in proportion, and 

 also lighter and more porous. The transverse processes arise from the middle 

 of it on each side. The oblique descending processes are altogether wanting; 

 and the arch, or foramen, which the spinal marrow passes through, is made up 

 bv the spinal process and the oblique ascending ones only: the body of the 

 vertebra is very rough and uneven on each end, full of small holes and emi- 

 nences, which receive the holes and eminences of a round bone, or plate, 

 which answers to the epiphysis in a human vertebra, of which there are two 

 between each vertebra, joined together by an intermediate strong and pretty 

 thick cartilage, probably to facilitate the motion, and particularly the flexion of 

 these animals in the sea. But to return. 



There are many skeletons, that have from time to time been found under 

 ground, and are mentioned by authors, who speak of them as skeletons of 

 giants, and undeniable monuments of their existence, which he rather takes to 

 be the skeletons of elephants, whales, or some other huge land or sea animal. 

 Of this kind seem to be the pretended skeletons of giants of 12, 20, and 30 

 cubits in height, mentioned by Philostratiis ; the skeleton of 46 cubits in height, 

 which according to Pliny was found in the cavity of a mountain in Creta, on 

 the overthrowing of that mountain by an earthquake; the skeleton 6o cubits 

 high, which Strabo says, was found near Tingis, now Tangier, in Mauritania, 

 and was supposed to have been the skeleton of Anteus ; the skeleton of Pallas, 

 as pretended, found at Rome in the year 1500, which was higher than the walls 

 of that city; and likewise that, which Simon Majolus says, was found in Eng- 

 land in the year 1171: " Long before Fulgosus's time, upwards of 300 years, 

 viz. anno 1171, by the overflowing of a river, a human skeleton was disco- 

 vered in England, where the bones are still in their proper order: the length of 

 the whole body was 50 feet." 



There are others, the description of which concludes more clearly for their 

 having once belonged to elephants, though it could not be positively asserted, 

 that they did. St. Austin, discoursing of the existence and great feats of the 

 giants before the deluge, mentions in proof of what he advances, that he him- 

 self, with several others, saw at Utica, on the sea-shore, the grinder of a man 

 so large, that if it had been cut into teeth of an ordinary size, at least 100 

 might have been made of it. Hieronymus Magius, though himself very much 

 prejudiced in favour of the existence of giants, yet suspects this tooth, men- 



