ANTHROPOLOGY. 



53 



covered in Tarija, which weighs a pound and a half* : con- 

 sequently, the mummy from which it was extradled must have 

 possessed a much greater bulk than the skeleton dug up by 

 Habicot, who asserts that it measured in length twenty-five 

 feet and a half -f. Perhaps the Patagonians who have been 

 ^ described, 



* The very respedtable person who was originally possessed of the above-men- 

 tioned tooth, and whose veracity cannot be called in question, has assured us, that 

 the body from which it was extra£l:ed, was conveyed, at a great expence, and with 

 infinite care, from Tarija to Cusco, by the Marquis of Valle-Umbroso, who caused 

 it to be shipped for Madrid; but that it was intercepted on the passage by the 

 English, by whom it was conveyed to London. Jf, perchance, the Peruvian Mer- 

 cury should reach that Capital., we request to know, through the medium of the 

 Philosophical Transaflions, whether the giant thus intercepted wants the tooth in 

 question. Father Francisco Gonzales Laguna possessed a tooth of the same kind, 

 brought from the above province of Tarija, which weighed more than five pounds, 

 notwithstanding several portions of the fangs had been broken off. It was sent to the 

 cabinet of Madrid. 



As the spots of South America in which these relics are found are level grounds, 

 and as they have not hitherto been discovered in the more elevated and mountainous 

 parts of Peru, the opinion of Haller, that those who inhabit the plains are of larger 

 stature than those by whom the mountains are peopled, seems to be confirmed. It 

 may be urged, however, that these are not the remains of rational, but of irrational 

 creatures, not terrestrial, there-being no records of any such, of enormous bulk, be- 

 fore the conquest of Peru by the Spaniards, but marine, as they were left by the 

 universal deluge. Consenting, in the first instance, to this opinion, wc shall pro- 

 ceed to ask, why these skeletons are not found in the deep cavities of the moun- 

 tainous territory, where it is more natural to suppose that the bodies would have 

 been deposited, to perish and decay, on the retirement of the waters ? 



f Daubenton, in controverting the relation of Habicot, principally founds his 

 objedlions on the disproportion of the limbs of the giant described by the latter. For 

 instance, to a height of twenty-five feet and a half, he allows a breadth of ten feet to 

 the shoulders. "An unheard-of disproportion," observes Daubenton : " a human 

 skeleton of five feet in height, has not a breadth of more than thirteen inches ; con- 

 sequently, 



