'256 I'UILOSOPHICAL Tr.ANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1728. 



have been the giant Briatus, was conjectured to have been of 15 cubits. The 

 skull alone was '1 cubits thick, and the shoulder-bone 6 cubits broad. Some- 

 time after, other bones of this kind were found in the same barony, near the 

 same place, part of which Cassanio saw himself, and gives such a particular 

 description of one of the teeth, as leaves little room to doubt, but that it was 

 the grinder, and consequently the other bones, the bones of an elephant. His 

 words are to this effect: " I saw there several bones, among which was a tooth 

 of a surprising size, 12 inches long, and weighing 8 lb.; it was much longer 

 than it was thick, and had some roots by which it was fastened in the jaw; the 

 part by which the food was ground was 4 inches broad, and rather concave." 

 He adds further, that such another tooth was kept at Charmes, a neighbouring 

 castle; that he measured the length of the place, whence these bones were 

 dug, and found it to be Q paces; that some time after, more bones were disco- 

 vered at the same place, and that the country all thereabouts was very moun- 

 tainous, and such as the giants in all probability delighted to dwell and com- 

 mand in. Sir Hans Sloane has seen some of these bones brought from this 

 place, wliich he took to have belonged to an elephant, by some large cells be- 

 tween the tables of the skull, which are in the skull of that animal. 



Hieronymus Magius gives an account of a very large skull, 1 1 spans in cir- 

 cumference, and some other bones, probably belonging to that skull, which 

 were dug up near Tunis in Africa, by two Spanish slaves, as they were plough- 

 ing in a field. He was informed of this matter by Melchior Guilandinus, who 

 saw the skull himself, when he had the misfortune to be taken by the Rovers, 

 and carried into slavery to that place in the year 1359. Sir Hans Sloane is the 

 more inclined to believe, that this skull and bones were part of the skeleton of 

 an elephant, because a like large skeleton was dug up near the same place some 

 time after, which by one of the teeth sent to Peiresk was made out to have been 

 the skeleton of an elephant. 



Sir H. Sloane now comes to those bones, teeth and tusks, or horns, as some 

 call them, which are mentioned by authors to have been dug up in divers parts 

 of the world, and have been made out by them, or otherwise appear by their 

 description and figures, indisputably to belong to the elephant. 



Johannes Goropius Becanus, though he lived in an age when the stories of 

 giants were very much credited, and had found their advocates, even among 

 persons eminent for their learning and judgment, yet ventured to assert, that 

 the tooth which was kept and shown at Antwerp, as the tooth of that unmer- 

 ciful giant, whose defeat, brought about as they pretended by Brabo a son of 

 Julius Caesar, and king of the Arcadians, was fabulously reputed to have given 

 occasion to the building of that castle and city, was nothing but the grinder of 



