VOL. XXXV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 25^ 



an elephant. However displeasing this assertion might be, as Goropius further 

 adds, to those who are delighted with such idle and ridiculous stories, yet to 

 the judicious it will appear the less surprising, on account of what passed not 

 long before he wTOte this book, when the almost entire skeletons of two ele- 

 phants, with the grinders, and likewise the dentes exerti, or tusks, were found 

 near Wielworda, Vilvorden, as they were digging a canal from Brussels to the 

 river Rupel, to defend that town and country from the incursions of those of 

 Mechlen. Goropius conjectures, that these elephants had been brought thither 

 by the Romans, at the time either of the emperor Galien, or Posthumus. 



A very large skeleton, likewise of a giant, as pretended, was dug up near 

 Tunis in Africa, about the year J 630, of which one Thomas d'Arcos, who 

 was then at that place, sent an account, together with one of the teeth, to the 

 learned Peiresk. The skull was so large, that it contained eight ineilleroles (a 

 nieasure of wine in Provence) or one modius, as Gassendus calls it, or a pint 

 and a half Paris measure. Sometime after a live elephant having been shown 

 at Toulon, Peiresk ordered, that he should be brought to his country seat, on 

 purpose to take that opportunity to examine the teeth of the creature, the im- 

 pressions of which he caused to be taken in wax, and thus found, that the pre- 

 tended giant's tooth sent him from Tunis, was only the grinder of an elephant. 

 This is the second large skeleton dug up near Tunis in Africa, and it appearing 

 plainly by the tooth sent to Peiresk, that it was the skeleton of an elephant, it 

 may from thence very probably be conjectured, some other circumstances con- 

 curring, that the other also, which Guilandinus saw there, must have been 

 rather of an elephant than of a giant. 



Thomas Bartholin mentions the grinder, or maxillar-tooth, of an elephant, 

 which was dug up in Iceland, and sent to him by Petrus Resenius. It was 

 turned to a perfect stony substance, like flint, as was also the tusk of a ros- 

 marus, dug up in the same island. 



A large tooth, which by its shape appears plainly to be the grinder of an 

 elephant, is described and figured by Lambecius, who had it out of the em- 

 peror's library, though he could not be informed where it was found, or how 

 it got thither. It weighed 28 ounces, and was commonly taken to be the 

 tooth of a giant. Antonius de Pozzis, chief physician to the emperor, in a 

 letter to Lambecius, affirms it to be an elephant's tooth, and conjectures, that 

 it was dug up at Baden, about 4 miles from Vienna, where, but a few years 

 before he wrote this letter, they had found also the os tibiae et femoris of an 

 elephant. 



Another tooth, probably of an elephant too, is described and figured by 

 Lambecius, who had it out of the emperor's library. It weighed 23 ounces, 



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