226 OV THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



ducing beasts of enormous size, and yet who will deny that beasts of 

 equally enormous bulk, have not been born in Italy, when we behold 

 elephants that have been born within our walls ?" — Columella de Re 

 Rustica, lib. iii, cap. viii. 



Had our naturalists paid sufficient attention to these two passages, 

 they would not have been believers so long in the impossibility of 

 causing the elephant to breed in the domestic state ; and tliey might, 

 perhaps, have long since attempted the experiments which have proved 

 so successful with M. Corse. 



Many of the succeeding emperors, Domitian, Antoninus Pius, Corn- 

 modus, Septimus Severus Caracella, Heliogabalus likewise, kept ele- 

 phants. Gordian had thirty-two ; Gallienus, ten. It would appear 

 that the latter were the last that were exhibited L in the public 

 games. 



Unquestionably then there did exist in Italy and in the other coun- 

 tries conquered by the Romans, a considerable number of elephants at 

 certain well authenticated periods. Thus, although Italy presents us 

 with an immense quantity of the bones of these animals in the fossil state, 

 their origin has long been attributed to those individual animals which 

 existed on the soil at periods mentioned in history : it may be too that 

 some of them have been derived from that source, but the circum- 

 stances in which they are usually discovered prove, that a very small 

 proportion only can belong to this class. They are almost invariably 

 discovered intermixed with the bones of the hippopotamus and the 

 rhinoceros, which most certainly were not brought there either by Han- 

 nibal or the Roman armies. 



The following is a reference to the principal places in Italy, where 

 to my own knowledge, bones of this description have been exhumed, 

 but I am very far from considering it as complete. 



The largest tusk was discovered near Rome in 1769, by the Duke 

 de la Rochefoucauld and M. Desmarests ; it was ten feet long, and 

 eight inches in diameter, although it was not entire *. We have four 

 pieces of it in the Museum, they are much decomposed, and when put 

 together are five feet in length. 



There were some bones discovered at Rome as early as 1664, when 

 a foundation was being dug in -front of the Vatican f. We find Baccius 

 6peaking in 1582, of similar discoveries in that city, and there is a 

 strong probability that the body of Pallas, son of Evander, found in 

 the reign of Henry III. in 1041 or 1054, and which was higher than the 

 walls of the city, was nothing more than a remnant of this description. 



Fortis mentions another tusk found by chance at the summit of a 

 vineyard, and some others discovered near the Tiber, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Rome and Todi. 



M. Charles Louis Morozzo gives the drawing of a jaw, found in 

 April, 1800, in a vineyard, outside the Porto del Popolo, with many 

 other bones and fragments of ivory. 



In the cabinet of the College of La Sapienza are preserved the frag- 



* Buffon, Epochs of Nature. f Mounsy's Travels in Italy, p. 446. 



