In 1663 Otto de Guericke, the illustrious inventor of the air-pump, witnessed the discovery of the bones of an Elephant, buried in the shelly limestone, or Muschelkalk. Along with it were found its enormous tusks, which should have sufficed to establish its zoological origin. Nevertheless they were taken for horns, and the illustrious Leibnitz composed, out of the remains, a strange animal, carrying a horn in the middle of its forehead, and in each jaw a dozen molar teeth a foot long. Having fabricated this fantastic animal, Leibnitz named it also--he called it the _fossil unicorn_. In his “Protogæa,” a work remarkable besides as the first attempt at a theory of the earth, Leibnitz gave the description and a drawing of this imaginary animal. During more than thirty years the unicorn of Leibnitz was universally accepted throughout Germany; and nothing less than the discovery of the entire skeleton of the Mammoth in the valley of the Unstrut was required to produce a change of opinion. This skeleton was at once recognised by Tinzel, librarian to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, as that of an Elephant, and was established as such; not, however, without a keen controversy with adversaries of all kinds. In 1700 a soldier of Würtemberg accidentally observed some bones showing themselves projecting out of the earth, in an argillaceous soil, near the city of Canstadt, not far from the banks of the Necker. Having addressed a report to the reigning Duke, the latter caused the place to be excavated, which occupied nearly six months. A veritable cemetery of elephants was discovered, in which were not less than sixty tusks. Those which were entire were preserved; the fragments were abandoned to the court physician, and they became a mere vulgar medicine. In the last century the fossil bones of bears, which were abundant in Germany, were administered in that country medicinally, as an absorbent, astringent, and sudorific. It was then called by the German doctors the _Ebur fossile_, or _Unicornu fossile_, _Licorn fossil_. The magnificent tusks of the Mammoth found at Canstadt helped to combat fever and colic. What an intelligent man this court physician of Würtemberg must have been!