Of PETRIFACTIONS* 23$ 



descriptions of anthropolithi. In the year 1577, Fel. 

 Plater, Professor of Anatomy at Basil, described several 

 fossil bones of the elephant found at Lucerne, as those 

 of a giant at least nineteen feet high. The Lucernese 

 were so perfectly satisfied with this discovery, that they 

 caused a painting to be made of the giant as he must 

 have appeared when alive, assumed two such giants as 

 the supporters of the city arms, and had the painting 

 hung in their public hall. The Landvoigt Engel, not 

 satisfied with this account of these remains, maintained 

 that our planet, before the creation of the present race 

 of men, was inhabited by the fallen angels, and that these 

 bones were parts of the skeletons of some of those mise- 

 rable beings. Scheuchzer published an engraving and 

 description of a fossil human skeleton, which proved to 

 be a gigantic species of salamander or proteus. Spal- 

 lanzani describes a hill of fossil human bones in the 

 island of Cerigo ; but this also is an error, as has been 

 satisfactorily shown by Blumenbach. Lately, however, 

 a fossil human skeleton has been imported into this coun- 

 try from Gaudaloupe by Sir Alexander Cochrane. It is 

 imbedded in a block of calcarious stone, composed of 

 particles of limestone and coral, and which, like the ag- 

 gregations of shells found on the limestone coasts in some 

 parts of this country, has acquired a great degree of hard- 

 ness. It is therefore an instance of a fossil human petri- 

 factibn in an alluvial formation. The engraving here 

 given is copied from the Philosophical Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of London ; and the following de- 

 scription of the fossil remains it exhibits is that of Mr. 

 Konig, which has been drawn up with great care. 



" The situation of the skeleton in the block was so su- 

 perficial, that its presence in the rock on the coast had 



