48 FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



mal and vegetable remains with which they are intermingled, 

 we cannot hesitate to renounce an hypothesis of this kind. A 

 skeleton was discovered at Tonna, in the territory of Gotha, in 

 1696. The physicians of the country consulted by the Duke, 

 declared the bones submitted to their inspection to be mere 

 lusus natures, and supported this opinion by many profound 

 treatises. Teutzel, however, the hbrarian of this prince, com- 

 pared each bone separately with its analogous part in the ele- 

 phant according to the description of Allen Moulin, and some 

 remarks of Aristotle, Pliny, and Ray, and clearly demonstrated 

 the resemblance. He also proved, from the regularity of the 

 strata under which this skeleton was found, that it could not 

 have been brought there by human means, but by some general 

 catastrophe, such as the Noachian deluge. Yet, so far did the 

 fondness for the contrary hypothesis prevail, that, as long as 

 only isolated discoveries of bones were made in those parts 

 of Germany where the Romans had not been, they were 

 referred to an elephant sent to Charlemagne by the Caliph 

 Haroun-al-Raschid, which arrived as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, 

 and might have been conducted farther ! 



liet us now pass to our own islands, which, from their situa- 

 tion, could not in ancient times have received many living 

 elephants ; and yet we shall find as great ^ number of fossil 

 remains here, in proportion, as on the continent. It is true, 

 indeed, that Pohaenus reports that a single elephant was brought 

 hither by Caesar, but that will hardly be deemed more sufli- 

 cient to account for our British fossils, than that of Charle- 

 magne is for the elephantine remains of Germany. 



We shall briefly notice the more remarkable detections. 

 Sir Hans Sloane possessed a tusk discovered in Gray ""s -Inn- 

 Lane, twelve feet under ground, in the gravel bed. Bones of 

 the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the deer, and 

 the ox, were discovered near Brentford, mixed with land and 

 fresh-water shells, of which remains a partial description ap- 

 peared in the '^ Philosophical Transactions,'' in 1813. They 



