ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT OF THE RUSSIANS. 229 



Coltellini mentions four different places in the territory of Cortona, 

 where bones and tusks have been found * ; perhaps these are the same 

 mentioned by Targioni Tozzetti in his travels in Tuscany f. The latter 

 was himself in possession of a large piece of ivory found at Lucignano, 

 not far from Cortona J. 



M. Georges Santi, professor in the University of Pisa, has in his 

 possession a fragment of an elephant's jaw, found near Colli Lungo, in 

 a valley which stretches from the foot of Monte Pulciano to the great 

 valley of Chiana. It was imbedded in that consolidated sand which 

 in Italy is called Tufo, and which contains marine bodies and foreign 

 woods in a petrified state. 



It was in the valley of Chiana and district of Arezzo, that the Grand 

 Duke Ferdinand II, that generous protector of the sciences, caused an 

 entire skeleton to be exhumed in 1663 § ; part of which, according to 

 Targioni, is still preserved at Florence, and which most probably is that 

 alluded to by Steno [] and Boccone ^f. But it is more especially in the 

 upper valley of the Arno that they abound in such prodigious numbers. 

 Cesalpin had already drawn attention to a thigh found at Castel San 

 Giovanni, between Arezzo and Florence **. 



Dr. Barthelemy Mesnig, the descendant of a family of Lorraine, 

 transplanted into Tuscany in the time of Francis the First, has pub- 

 lished a little treatise in French ft, on the bones of the valley of the 

 Arno, in which he gives drawings of several fragments, and particu- 

 larly of a large portion of a head, exhumed by the late Fabrini, to 

 which we shall hereafter advert. 



The authors of our times who have gone most extensively into de- 

 tails on the nature of these bones are John Targioni Tozzetti J J, and 

 Professor Nesti §§. The former found them in great quantities in the 

 valleys of Riesco and Faella, near the villages of Viesca Faella and 

 Municoro, on the right of the Arno, and he gives us a catalogue of those 

 he preserved in his library. He had with his own hands extracted a 

 thigh bone penetrated with spath from the sand near Viesca. 



He had seen many others exhumed by Dominic Sforazzini, near Terra 

 Nuova, a village situated a little higher than those we have just men- 

 tioned, but on the same bank, and lying between San Giovanni and 

 Monte Varchi. He likewise collected some on the route to Arezzo, and 

 in the territory belonging to that city near the village of Monzione on 

 the river Castro, to the left of the Arno. 



The place to which I would particularly draw attention, as furnishing 

 the most complete idea of the excessive abundance of these bones, is the 



* Journal of Etruria, July, 1761 ; and Buffon's Supplement to his Natural His" 

 tory, vol. v, p. 515. 



•f Travels in Tuscany, vol. vii, p. 413. 



+ Ibid., vol. viii, p. 401. 

 -§ Description of the Cospian Museum, by Lorenzo Legati, p. 6. 



|| On Solids within Solids, p. 64. 



% Natural Observations and Researches, p. 327. 



** Cesalpin on Metals, Book ii. p. 141. 



ft Observations on the Fossil Teeth of Elephants found in Tuscany and Florence, 

 svo. 



XX Travels in Tusca y. 



§§ Memoirs of the Imperial Museum at Florence. 



VOL. I. Y 



