250 ON TIIE FOSSIL BONES OK PACHYDERMATOUS QUADHUr£DS. 



second phalanx of the toe. We may remark there were no teeth, a 

 circumstance which prevented Plater from recognizing the bones to 

 be those of a quadruped. But then, how came there to be a clavicle, 

 since the elephant has none ? Most probably it was a radius or a 

 first rib. According to Scheuchzer there only remained, in 1706*, 

 with the drawing, a portion of the shoulder blade and two bones, 

 which he believed to belong to the carpus f. M. Blumenbach, who 

 has seen them recently, recognized them at once as being the bones 

 of the elephant +. It is from this supposed giant that the inhabitants 

 of Lucerne have borrowed the figure that supports the arms of their 

 town. 



Scheuchzer quotes an ancient manuscript § Chronicle, which states 

 that the leg below the knee was five feet long, and was a foot and a 

 half in circumference at the upper extremity. 



The same author speaks, on the authority of Wagner ||, of another 

 supposed giant, dug out of the soft gravel stone near d'Utikonin the 

 canton of Zurich. 



That part of Alsace lying below Strasbourg is not less prolific in 

 these fossils than the higher regions. 



A skeleton, almost entire, was exhumed at Vendenheim, a mile to 

 the north of Strasbourg, in 1807. It was found on one of the most 

 prominent of the Vosgian mountains, forty feet below the surface, 

 while they were sinking a well. There is no part of it now remain- 

 ing but a tusk, four feet ten inches long, and five inches in diameter, 

 and some minor particles of no importance. I give these details from 

 the written statements of MM. Herrmann and Hammer. Mention 

 is made of them in the Annuaire of the department of the Bas-Rhine, 

 for the year 1808; and allusion is there made to a similar discovery 

 made some years previous, on another projection of the Vosgian moun- 

 tains, at Epfig, eight leagues from Strasbourg, while they were digging 

 the foundation of a church. 



In 1807, a jaw and some bones were found at Gertwiller, near 

 Barr, seven leagues from Strasbourg, at the foot of the mountains. 

 They were three feet below the surface, in a gravel bed which forms 

 the bottom of the plain of Alsace. 



M. Hammer is also in possession of a fragment of a tusk found in 

 an island of the Rhine, near Seltz, and another from the neighbour- 

 hood of Haguenau. The left bank of the Rhine, as far as the Palati- 

 nate, and the surrounding country, continues to furnish these fossils. 



There is an entire Dissertation of Charles Gotlob Steding, on the 

 fossil ivory of the neighbourhood of Spires^[. He gives a drawing of a 

 jaw, of thirteen separate plates : there are two wanting in front, and 

 one or two behind. It was found four feet below the surface, and 

 weighed three pounds and a half; close by it was the fragment of a 

 tusk, weighing four pounds. 



* Felix Plater, Medical Observations, book iii, chap. 586. 



f Scheuchzer's Itinerary of the Alps, vol. v, p. 368. 



X Magazine of Mr. Voigt, for Nat. and Phys. Rist., vol. v, p. 16. 



§ Manuscript Chronicle of Haller, booksli. 



|| Nat. Hist, of Helvetia, p. 152. 



% Nov. Ac. Nat. Cur., vol vi. p. 367. 



