This account is only worth preserving, as it fixes the time at which these extraordinary remains of antiquity were first discovered in America, previous to their being found in Siberia. The supposition that they were the bones of a giant was scarcely less probable than that they should have belonged to a quadruped of which not the smallest vestige could be traced.—Prepossessed, therefore, with the certainty of their being human bones, a calculation was made of the height of the supposed giant, very probably from a broken piece of thigh-bone, and a length of seventeen feet was calculated in proportion to the thickness of that which was subject to their examination; for take either half of these thigh-bones, and nothing can more resemble that of the human leg, until the whole is seen together, when, from its thickness, it is evidently that of a quadruped, the human thigh being very long and slender. The seventy-five feet of black earth, which they calculated to be the length of a man whose thigh-bone was supposed seventeen feet, could have been nothing but a small morass divested of its water; and hence the decayed state of the bones. It appears that about the year 1740, great numbers of bones, of a similar kind, were found in Kentucky on the Ohio; but they were collected with such eagerness, and forwarded to Europe so hastily, that it shortly became impossible to distinguish one set of bones from another, so as to ascertain their number, proportion, and kind; parts of the same animal having been scattered over England, France, and Germany, and there compared with similar ones from Siberia. Buffon[1] speaking of one of these thigh-bones brought from the Ohio by the way of Canada, which he describes as being the tenth of an inch shorter than one from Siberia, and yet an inch thicker, says; “This disproportion is so great as hitherto to deceive me with respect to this bone, though it otherwise resembles, both in the external figure and internal structure, the femur of the elephant (he should have said, the femur found in Siberia), mentioned under the number DCDLXXXVII. The difference in thickness, which appeared excessive, seemed sufficient to attribute this bone to another animal which must have been larger than the elephant; but as no such animal is known, recourse must be had to the pretended MAMMOTH, a fabulous animal supposed to inhabit the regions of the north, where are frequently found bones, teeth, and tusks of the elephant.” Here again the word elephant is improperly introduced; Messrs. Buffon and Daubenton having conceived an idea that all the Siberian and some of the American bones belonged unquestionably to elephants, render their observations almost unintelligible, from the confident use of the term elephant in cases where it was at least doubtful, especially as it is now evident, that the same animal was native in the north of both countries; with one probable difference, that the bones of the American animal are