ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELETHANT. 267 



in the church of Trehnitz, of a thigh in the cathedral of Breslaw *, and 

 of a supposed giant exhumed at Liegnitz, in digging the foundation of 

 a church, whose bones were distributed among the principal churches 

 of the country. A thigh was drawn from the Oder itself in 1 6.52, near 

 Kleinschemnitz f. 



To the east of the bason of the Oder, we find that of the Vistula 

 in Poland and in Russia. 



Although this bason has been much less attentively examined than 

 those of the rivers of Germany, it lias nevertheless yielded its share of 

 the bones of elephants ; and, like so many others, has furnished matter 

 for the legends of giants, which may be seen in the Natural History of 

 Prussia, by Bock, vol. ii, p. 394. Conrad Gessner received a tusk from 

 that country j. 



Raczinsky mentions a molar tooth found on the banks of the same 

 river, six miles from Warsaw §, and Klein speaks of another found in 

 1736, six feet deep in the sand, near the convent of St. Adalbert, half 

 a mile from Dantzick ||. 



We have in the King's Museum two fossil molars transmitted from 

 that of the Academy of Sciences, and marked as having been found in 

 Poland : I have reason to believe we owe them to Guettard. Neither 

 is the bason of the Dniester or Tyras unprovided with them. This 

 same Klein speaks of some molars, and several other bones, thrown up 

 by that river near Kaminiek in 1720 %. They are also found in the 

 Bog or Hypanis.We read in the Journal of Marseilles, of the 19th of Fe- 

 bruary, 1820, the description of a thigh drawn out of that river oppo- 

 site Nicolaief, ten or twelve leagues from the sea, on the 25th of Au- 

 gust, 1819. The lower extremity of this thigh was brought into 

 France by the Chevalier Raynaud, a merchant of Odessa, and, at the 

 instance of the Duke de Richelieu, deposited by him in the King's 

 Museum. I have caused a drawing of it to be taken ; it indicates an 

 animal nearly fifteen feet in height. 



Of all countries in the world, that which has actually furnished, and 

 still contains the greatest quantity of elephants' bones, is the vast 

 empire of Russia, and particularly those provinces where we should 

 least expect to find them, viz. the most frozen regions of Siberia. 



In Russia in Europe they were discovered in several places at 

 a very early period. Some of enormous size were found at Swijatowski, 

 seventeen wersts from Petersburg, in 1775 **. 



In the Museum of that city, there is a tusk from the neighbourhood 

 of Archangel. ft. m the valley of the Dwina. 



Cornelius Lebrun mentions some tusks found immediately beneath 

 the surface, at Kostynsk near Voroneg, which Peter the Great, who, 



* Plate xxv, fig. 2. 

 f Eph. Ac. Nat. Cur. 1665. 

 X De fig. lap. p. 137. 

 § Nat. Hist, of Poland, vol. i. 



|| Hist. Pise. Nat. Promov. e miss., vol. ii, p. 32. J 



^[ Idem, ibidem. 



** Journal of Politics and Literature, 5th of January, 1776. Buffon's Epochs of 

 Nature, justificatory note 9. 



ft Pall. Nov. Com. Petrop., voL xiii, p. 471. 



