VOL. XXXV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 'i6 1 



cured a copy of it, and found on comparison, the abovementioned bones so 

 exactly to correspond with it, as to leave no room to doubt, but that they had 

 been part of an elephant's skeleton. 



The skeleton of an elephant, which was dug up in a sand-pit near Tonna in 

 Thuringen, in 1695, is one of the most curious, and the most complete in its 

 kind; as they found the whole head, with 4 grinders, and the two dentes 

 exerti, or tusks, the bones of the fore and hind-legs, one of the shoulder- 

 bones, the back-bones, with the ribs, and several of the vertebrae of the neck. 

 But the whole has been so accurately described by Wilhelmus Ernestus Tentze- 

 lius. Historiographer to the dukes of Saxony, in a letter to the learned Magli- 

 abechi, printed in the Philos. Trans. N° 234,* that it is needless to add any 

 thing, the rather, as that gentleman obliged the Royal Society with some pieces 

 of the bones of this elephant, with part of the skull, in which appeared its 

 cells, some of the grinders, and part of the dentes exerti ; all which being pro- 

 duced at a meeting of the Royal Society, were found exactly agreeable to his 

 description, and ordered to be carefully preserved in their repository. From 

 the surface of the ground, down to the place where these bones were found, 

 the diposition of the strata was as follows : a black soil 4 feet deep, gravel 2-|- 

 feet, the middle of which consisted of osteocolla and stones to the depth of 2 

 feet, osteocolla and stones half a foot, a sandy clay 6 feet, with about 2 inches 

 of osteocolla in the middle, osteocolla and pebbles 1 foot, gravel Q feet, a white 

 and fine sand, of unknown depth, in which the bones were found. 



In vol. 2, of Count Marsili's Danubius, where he treats of the antiquities 

 he observed along this river, mention is made of several bones and teeth of 

 elephants, which that inquisitive nobleman met with in Hungary and Transyl- 

 vania, and which are now in his valuable collection of natural and artificial 

 curiosities at Bologna. According to the best information, the people of whom 

 he had them could give him, they were found in rivers, lakes, and pools. One 

 of the vertebrae, a grinder, and a considerable part of the dens exertus, or tusk, 

 were found in the lake, or pool of Hiulca. Two fragments of the os tibias, 

 a little corroded on the inside, were taken out of a pool near Fogheras in 

 Transylvania, once the seat of the princes of that country ; and the whole 

 lower jaw, with two grinders as yet sticking in it, were found in the standing 

 waters by the river Tibiscus, a little above die Romer skantz, or the Roman 

 fort. 



Above was related the opinion of Goropius on the antiquity of those two 

 elephants, whose skeletons were found near Vilvorden, which he traces no 



* Vol. iv. p. 218 of these Abridgments. 



