ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT OF THE RUSSIANS. 255 



A little farther on, and in similar strata, they found the horns of a 

 stag or fossil elk ; and at the neighbouring village of Ballstadt, the 

 teeth of a rhinoceros. 



In addition to those already mentioned, there are other parts of the 

 valley of the Unstrut that have yielded the fossil bones of elephants. 

 At Vera *, for instance, they found a tusk that weighed a hundred 

 and fifteen pounds, and was ten feet long. 



The little town of Canstadt, in the district of Wirtemburg, on the 

 Necker, is as celebrated as Tonna for the numerous bones of elephants 

 and of other foreign animals which it has produced. The principal 

 discovery took place in 1 700. David Spleiss, a physician of Schaff- 

 house, has given a minute account of it in a Treatise, entitled " yEdipus 

 Osteolithologicus, or an Historical and Physical Dissertation on the 

 Fossil Horns and Bones of Canstadt." Schaff. 1701, 4to. In this 

 treatise he inserts a rather cleverly executed essay, by Solomon Reisel, 

 physician to the duke. Mention is likewise made of them in the Me- 

 dulla Mirabilium of Seyfried, and in the Descriptio Ossium Fossilium 

 Canstadiensium of Reisselius ; and John Samuel Carl has given a chy- 

 mical analysis of them, which is excellent, considering the period at 

 which it was written, in his Lapis Lydius, philosophicopyrotecknicus. 



In addition to these authorities, I am indebted to the friendship of 

 Mr. Autenrieth, professor of anatomy at Tubingue, and to that of M. 

 Jaeger, keeper of the Museum of Natural History at Stuttgart, for a 

 circumstantial account of them. 



Those two learned men have these bones at present under their in- 

 spection ; they are well acquainted with the place in which they 

 were found, and they have been enabled to compare the statements 

 which were drawn up at the time of their discovery. The spot where 

 they were found lies to the east of Necker, a mile from the town, in 

 the direction of the village of Feldbach. Reisel tells us there were 

 near them the ruins of an old wall, eight feet thick and eighty in cir- 

 cumference. It appeared to be the enclosure of a fort or a temple, 

 which has led Spleiss to conclude that the bones were those of the 

 animals they were in the habit of sacrificing there. But they were, 

 for the most part, much deeper than the foundations of this wall, 

 and besides, there were more of them found nearer to Necker, in a 

 common mould, similar to that in which the others had been found. 

 All that can be deduced from their abundance in this enclosure is, 

 that they had been previously exhumed and collected into this spot, 

 by some curious investigators. 



The soil is formed of yellow clay, mixed with small particles of round 

 quartz and small shells. Mr. Autenrieth has sent me the drawings of 

 five of these shells, which appear to me to belong to our small fresh 

 water species. This clay fills the various recesses of the calcareous 

 hills which skirt the valley of the Necker, and which, after having 

 formed the chief part of the country of Wirtemberg, unite themselves 

 to some more elevated hills, of a reddish marl, which surround the 

 mountains of the high country, being calcareous, between the Necker 

 and the Danube (the Alb of Souabe), and formed of granite and free- 



* Knoll. Wunder Erscheinungen ; and Goethaisclie gel. Zeitung. 17S2^ February. 



