*775* November. on the other hand, are very brittle. The greater part are rather flat than round, and many o f them very uneven and a little twitted, while fome are thicker towards the point. Perhaps thefe hairs are not to be found upon every elephant, but only upon the large and old ones; as feveral o f my acquaintance, who have feen thefe animals in the menageries of Peteriburgh and Paris, could not recollect having obferved thefe hairs, juft as I have been defcribing them, and ihewed to them at the time. Foflil elephants teeth, perhaps, are feldptti to be had at the Cape; probably from their not having dug deep any where thereabouts, and from the Hottentots having long flnce catched up and carried away fuch as, after the death of any elephant, may have been to be found near the fur-, face, and likewife from the Caffres being accuftomed to make bracelets of fuch as they can procure. Seafaring men, however, who have vilited the eattern coaft of Africa, have informed me, that they have ivory there either for barter or for fale, in a much greater quantity than if is probable the barbarous inhabitants could themfelves procure by hunting. This likewife accords with what I think I remember to have read in fome old writers of voyages. A farmer told me, that when he lived in the diftri£t of Cango in this colony, he had found fome elephants teeth, not irt the leaft damaged, three feet under ground, which he imagined had been buried there in former times by the Hottentots as a treafure. It is likewife poflible, thaf they might have been buried by degrees, and in procefs of time by the winds railing the fand and duft near them, and afterwards were farther covered over by the mould produced by by decayed trees and vegetables» As likewife people at the Cape are very little ufed to pry into the bowels o f the earth, there perhaps ftill lie buried, from the like caufes, in feveral fpots thereabouts, a hundred times this quantity of elephants teeth. It has, however, much more puzzled the philolbphcrs with their iyftems and conjecStures to explain, how elephants teeth and bones, as well as the remains of the rhinoceros, Ihould get to the cold latitude o f Siberia, where, by the name of relicks o f the Mam- moutb, (an imaginary fubterraneous animal,) they are dug up in greater quantities than any where elfe. In the mean while, till this matter is cleared up, as after the whole is mere conjeftu-re; M. d e B u f f o n , forinftance, (fee his Supplement, of late refuted with great folidity by M. M a r i v e t z , Phyjiquedu Monde, Tom. I.) modifying the earth according to his own fancy, and, after having previoufly brought it to a fwelling heat, fuppoiing it firtt began to cool at Siberia and. near the pole, at which time the creation of elephants, See. took place ; others again drowning it in a deluge, in order to have an opportunity of carrying thither by the torrent the rhinoceros and elephant from the warmer climates of Alia : I, for my part, could wilh, that thefe great men with their fyftems, would allow them quietly to take their own courfe, and to get to Siberia on . their feet. No eafier method at leaft, none more natural, nor more confiftent with the conftant practice o f other migrating animals can poflibly be thought of. Who is not, for inftanqe, acquainted with the pertinacious migrations from time to time o f the lemings (mus lemmus,) where they mutt in the end be frozen and famifhed to5 death, in X x a cafe
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