326 RHINOCEROS. 



" News from Chartham in Kent. Although it may, 

 and perhaps must be granted, that miracles (strictly un- 

 derstood) are long since ceased ; yet in the latitude of 

 the notion, comprehending all things uncouth and strange, 

 (miranda, as well as miracula; wonders as well as miracles,) 

 they are not so ; but do, more or less, somewhere or other 

 dayly exert and shew themselves, Dies diem docet." 1 " 1 After 

 a fling at the " New lights that are now-a-days much 

 cried up, 1 ' and leaving these " spiritual mountebanks and 

 their counterfeit ware," a race still far from being ex- 

 tinct, the worthy ' Register ' proceeds " to the matter-of- 

 fact then." 



" Mr. John Somner, in the month of September, 1 668, 

 sinking a well at a new house of his in Chartham, a vil- 

 lage about three miles from Canterbury, towards Ash- 

 ford, on a shelving ground or bankside, within twelve rods 

 of the river, running from thence to Canterbury and to 

 Sandwich Haven ; and, digging for that purpose about 

 seventeen feet deep, through gravelly and chalky ground 

 and two feet into the springs ; there met with, took, and 

 turned up a parcel of strange and monstrous bones, some 

 whole, some broken, together with four teeth, perfect 

 and sound, but in a manner petrified and turned into 

 stone, weighing (each tooth) something above half a pound, 

 and almost as big, some of them, as a man's fist." 



Alluding to the notices of the remains of giants which 

 were current in the philosophical and other works of the time, 

 the author judiciously remarks : " And so we must have 

 judged of these teeth and of the body to which they be- 

 longed ; had not other bones been found with them, which 

 could not be man's bones." " Some that have seen them," 

 he proceeds to say, " by the teeth and some other cir- 

 cumstances, are of opinion, that they are the bones of 



