2'M ON THE EOSSIL BONKS OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



Museum which the Valdarnasian academy, established at Figlini, has 

 formed in an old convent of that town. We may there behold several 

 hundred fragments which fill two rooms, and which have all been 

 found in the neighbourhood. 



They are so common in the hills that skirt that part of the valley, 

 that the peasants were wont to use them indiscriminately with stones 

 in the construction of the little walls that surround their habitations. 

 Now that they have learned to appreciate their value, they lay them 

 aside to sell to travellers. It was in this way that I became pos- 

 sessed of an atlas of very large dimensions. It was brought to my 

 carriage window while I was changing horses- Happening to take 

 a walk with Prosessor Nesti, I myself perceived and picked up a 

 molar tooth, which had been laid bare by a rivulet, close to that same 

 Viesca where Targioni had found so many of those relics. 



In the lower valley of the Arno they are also found in great abundance. 

 According to the Novelle Literarie of Florence, several bones and 

 tusks were discovered in 1753, on the hills adjoining the castle of 

 Cereto Guidi, between the lake Fucecchio and the Arno. Four of 

 these pieces were picked up by the Chevalier Buontalenti *. 



Foitis speaks of a tusk found in the same place by Professor Nenci f. 

 According to the account of John Targioni Tozzetti, Nenci had found 

 the fragments of no less than four skeletons, which Targioni pre- 

 served in his museum, and which he enumerates in his collection J. 

 But a short time previous, a skeleton, almost quite perfect, was dis- 

 covered in the same place on the estate of the Messrs. Gaddi, and many 

 of the bones were deposited in their museum. 



The bones found at Cereto Guidi form the chief subject of the 

 letter addressed by Dr. John Targioni Tozzetti to Buffon in 1754§. 

 In that letter the author mentions that they had belonged to animals 

 differing very much in age, many of them having been very young, and 

 that they were found intermixed with the bones of many other animals, 

 such as oxen, stags, and horses. His son, Octavian Targioni Tozzetti, 

 whose acquirements in natural science were equally extensive and pro- 

 found, has presented me with the model of a very small under jaw, 

 belonging to one of the youngest subjects, which 1 have placed in the 

 King's Museum. 



That entire section of the valley of Nievolo and its vicinity is very 

 rich in the spoils of the elephant. In 1 744, a tusk was exhumed near 

 Ponte a Coppiano, quite close to the lake of Fucecchio, towards the 

 south || . And Dr. Venturini has described some bones found on the 

 hill of Lamporecchio, on the northern declivity of the little chain run- 

 ning between Pistoia and the lake ^]. They are found intermixed 

 with marine productions much more frequently in the lower than in 

 the upper valley of the Arno. For instance, those alluded to by Tar- 



* AIcod du Lac, Essays on Nat. Hist., vol. ii, p. 402. 

 ■f Fortis. 



% Travels in Tuscany, book v, p. 264. 



§ The letter has been translated into French, and printed in the foreign Journal of 

 December, 1755. It is also to be found in the Melanges of Alcon du Lac. 

 || Fortis' Memoirs on the Natural History of Italy. 

 ^ Idem, Conchil. Subapenn. vol. i, p. 184. 



