254 ON TIIE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUTEDS. 



of horizontal beds of a soft calcareous white gravel, containing bones, 

 stags' horns, the impressions of various leaves, which have been consi- 

 dered the productions of the aquatic plants and trees of the country, 

 and shells, which have been supposed to belong to the helix stagna- 

 lis, and other fresh water species. In many places this white gravel 

 becomes dissolved into a marly sand, which has been used, for more 

 than a century, for manuring lands. It is partly procured by irregu- 

 lar subterraneous excavations ; those in the districts of Burgtonna are 

 forty, fifty, and sixty feet below the surface of the soil. 



In these the workmen find from time to time the bones and teeth 

 of the elephant and rhinoceros, and of animals of the species of the 

 stag and tortoise. 



These beds of soft gravel alternate with others formed in a great 

 measure of clay, in which bones are also found, but less frequently than 

 in the others. 



The two skeletons of 1696 and 1799, were fifty feet below the 

 surface. 



Of the former, they found a thigh weighing thirty two pounds, and 

 the upper extremity of another thigh as large as that of a man, weigh- 

 ing nine pounds ; a shoulder four feet long and twenty-one inches 

 broad ; some vertebrae and some ribs ; the heads with four molar teeth, 

 each weighing twelve pounds, and two tusks eight feet in length ; 

 but the greater part of these pieces were damaged. 



I shall not stop to give an account of the disputes occasioned by 

 this discovery, The physicians of that country, when consulted by 

 the Duke of Gotha, were unanimous in their declaration, that these 

 objects were lusus natures, and they published several pamphlets in 

 support of this opinion; but Tentzel, the librarian of that prince, pro- 

 ceeding by a more rational process, compared each separate bone with 

 the corresponding bone of the elephant, as welhas he could form an 

 idea of them from the description of Allen-Moulin, and some remarks 

 of Aristotle, Pliny, and Ray, and succeeded in pointing out the re- 

 semblance between them. He went farther, and proved by the regu- 

 larity of the layers under which this skeleton had been found, that the 

 circumstance of its being there was not to be accounted for by any 

 interposition of man : but that it could only have been brought thither 

 by some general cause, sucli as was represented by the deluge. 



The second skeleton, that of 1799, was found in a compressed and 

 bent position : it occupied a space nearly twenty feet in length; the 

 hind feet were close to the tusks. The latter were ten feet long; they 

 had fallen out of their sockets, and lay across each other ; they were 

 tender but entire ; the arm could be easily introduced into their cavi- 

 ties. All that could be preserved of the head was a part of the lower 

 jaw, and two large molar teeth. The greater part of the other bones 

 and the ribs fell to pieces in being removed from the sockets, but a 

 portion of them was found. The cavities of the bones were in part 

 filled with crystals of spath. The crown of one of the molar teeth is 

 nine inches long and three broad, the upper extremity of a thigh, six 

 inches, &c* 



* Zach, in the work already cited, p. 27, and nste to p. 51. 



