‘But though we should give no credit to those ancient authors, there are monuments still extant, one particularly to be seen in our own island, which I think ought to convince every man that the men of ancient times were much superior to us, at least in the powers of the body. The monument I mean is well known by the name of Stonehenge, and there are several of the same kind to be seen in Denmark and Germany. I desire to know where are the arms now, that, with so little help of machinery as they must have had, could have raised and set up on end such a number of prodigious stones, and put others on the top of them, likewise of very great size? Such works are said by the peasants in Germany to be the works of giants, and I think they must have been giants compared with us. And, indeed, the men who erected Stonehenge could not, I imagine, be of size inferior to that man whose body was found in a quarry near to Salisbury, within a mile of which Stonehenge stands. The body of that man was fourteen feet ten inches. The fact is attested by an eye-witness, one Elyote, who writes, I believe, the first English-Latin Dictionary that ever was published. It is printed in London in 1542, in folio, and has, under the word _Gigas_, the following passage: “About thirty years past and somewhat more, I myself beynge with my father Syr Rycharde Elyote at a monastery of regular canons, called Juy Churche, two myles from the citie of Sarisburye, beholde the bones of a deade man founde deep in the grounde, where they dygged stone, which being joined togyther, was in length xiiii feet and ten ynches, there beynge mette; whereof one of the teethe my father hadde, whych was of the quantytie of a great walnutte. This have I wrytten, because some menne wylle believe nothynge that is out of the compasse of theyre owne knowledge, and yet some of them presume to have knowledge, above any other, contempnynge all men but themselfes or suche as they favour.” It is for the reason mentioned by this author that I have given so many examples of the greater size of men than is to be seen in our day, to which I could add several others concerning bodies that have been found in this our island, particularly one mentioned by Hector Boece in his _Description of Scotland_, prefixed to his Scotch History, where he tells us that in a certain church which he names in the shire of Murray, the bones of a man of much the same size as those of the man mentioned by Elyote, viz. fourteen feet, were preserved. One of these bones Boece himself saw, and has particularly described.’—_Ancient Metaphysics_, vol. iii. p. 156.