ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT OF THE RUSSIANS, 251 



The Museum of the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt contains a 

 lower jaw of very large dimensions, found near Worms. Merk 

 mentions it in his second letter on fossils (p. 9), and gives a drawing 

 of it (plate 3). 



In the Museum of Kunast there is a thigh from the same place. 

 We have in the King's Museum two lower jaws, belonging to 

 animals of different ages, both found in the neighbourhood of Cologne ; 

 and a jaw has just been procured which was found in the neighbour- 

 hood of Coblentz, which formerly belonged to M. Faujas. 



Germany has been still more prolific in these fossils. The Museum 

 Kunastrinum mentions fossil ivory from the country round Baden, 

 found on the banks of the Rhine in 1609, ten toises below the sur- 

 face of the soil *.. 



In the collection of M. Hammer there is a molar tooth, and the 

 fragment of a shoulder-plate, found near Brisach. In his travels, 

 written in 173 If, Keissler speaks of an elephant's head being found 

 at Manheim, in the Necker, seven feet below the surface : it was 

 preserved in the collection of Dr. Ressner at Frankfort. There is 

 an engraving of it in the atlas of Homan. According to the in- 

 scription, its length was four feet ten inches of the measure- 

 ment of the Rhine, (doubtless comprehending the fragment of the 

 tusk), audits weight two hundred and one pounds. Merk J also 

 mentions it, and tells us that it was transferred to Petersburgh. The 

 jaws were two in number, each nine inches long. 



M. Fischer sent me, at the time of its discovery, the drawing of a 

 large lower jaw, which was also found at Necker, and which is pre- 

 served in the Museum of Darmstadt. 



M. Hammer is in possession of a molar tooth, dug up in an island 

 of the Rhine, opposite Manheim, and a fragment extracted from that 

 river, near the same town. 



M. Gmelin, an apothecary of Tubingue, was in possession of a 

 lower jaw, found in the Rhine near Manheim also§; and in the Museum 

 of Runast there was a large bone, which is at present in that of 

 the School of Medicine at Strasbourg. 



In February, 1819, some boatmen drew from the Rhine, which was 

 then very low, at Sandhofen, near Manheim, the lower jaw of an ele- 

 phant, in a high state of preservation, and with it an enormous skull 

 of an aurochs. 



M. Tiedemann, the learned professor of Heidelberg, who has 

 made me acquainted with this latter circumstance, has likewise in- 

 formed me that, on the 21st of July, 1817, a tusk six feet long, rather 

 decomposed at either extremity, was discovered on the road to Schwet- 

 zingen, half a league from Heidelberg, thirty-six feet below the sur- 

 face, in a sand-pit. It has been placed in the Museum of the Uni- 



* Museum Kuuasterianum Strasbourg, 1668, ed. 8vp. p. 60, quarto edition, p. 13. 

 I am indebted to Mr. Hammer for this reference. 



f Keissler's Travels, vol. ii, p. 1469. 



X Second Letter, p. 14. 



§ Commercium Noricum, 1745, pl.iii, fig. 10, p. 297, and Keissler, in the passage 

 just quoted. 



