ON THE FOSSIL BONKS OF THE KLEPHANT OF THE RUSSIANS. 237 



with it a supposition of having been one of those which Hannibal 

 brought into Italy, it is undoubtedly that discovered by Mr. Cortesi ; 

 for it was found at a short distance from the Trebbia, where Han- 

 nibal lost several, and close to the road which he must have pur- 

 sued with the few that remained, and which perished in his first at- 

 tempt at crossing the Apennines, during the winter, when he was 

 obliged to fall back upon Placenza. It was found on Mount Pulg- 

 nasco, in the district of Diolo, nine miles below Placenza, and two 

 from the Trebbia. 



The bones were almost in the vegetable soil, for thev were pene- 

 trated by roots. They were in quantity sufficient to load six mules, 

 and amongst them were portions of the head, almost entire, with the 

 corresponding jaws which were formed of large plates. Mr. Cortesi has 

 had drawings made of them. He likewise mentions a tusk, nine inches 

 in dameter, a mutilated thigh, three feet eight inches, and a shoulder 

 bone three feet nine inches in length. All these fragments have been 

 deposited in the Museum of the Board of Mines at Milan. The head 

 of a rhinoceros was found hard by, as if for the purpose of falsifying 

 the conjectures likely to arise as to the Carthaginian origin of this 

 depot. 



In another species of lair and at a greater depth from the surface, 

 they found the head of a cetus, and the skeleton of a species of 

 dolphin almost perfect*. A remarkable depot, in which the bones of 

 elephants were heaped along with those of many other animals, was 

 found at Mount Serbaro, in the district of Roaiagnano, in the valley of 

 Pantama, three leagues from Verona. Fortis has devoted a particular 

 memoir to their description. They were found in a trench at the 

 summit of the hill. Among the bones of elephants was a tusk more 

 than nine inches in diameter, and which Fortis conjectures to have- 

 been twelve feet in length. The Count de Gazola has sent to our 

 museum from the same place, half of a lower jaw and a bone of the 

 metacarpus, which serve to indicate an animal at least fifteen feet in 

 height. 



Piedmont has furnished them in considerable quantities ; some years 

 since I had an account from the late Mr. Giorna, of two large 

 portions of jaws which are in the Museum of Natural History at 

 Turin. He afterwards acquainted me that there is also an elephant's 

 thigh in the same place. We have in our museum fragments of ivory 

 found at Butigliano, in the province of Asti. 



M. Maximilien Spinolse, a Genoese nobleman, and author of an ex- 

 cellent work on the insects cf Liguiia, has pressed upon my acceptance 

 the lower part of the head of a pcronea, discovered at Annona, quite 

 close to Asti on the road to Alexandria : it belonged to an animal at 

 least fifteen feet in height. The name Annona being, according to some 

 etymologists, derived from Castrum Hanttonis, (the camp of Hanno) 

 has not failed to suggest in its turn an allusion to the Carthaginians. 



According to Allioni, a skeleton almost entire was found in another 

 quarter of the district of Asti f, and Mr. Amoretti speaks of another 



* See the Memoirs of M. Joseph Cortesi on the bones of great animals found on 

 the hills of Placenza, reprinted in his Geological Essays at Placenza, 1819. 

 t Brocchi on Fossil Shells of the Apennines, vol. i, p. 181. 



vol. i. a 



