Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/385

Rh had it carefully removed from the earth; and after it had been freed from the soil, and washed, it seemed to have lost a part of its dusky hue, and had the shape and appearance of the ulna, the larger bone of the fore-arm of a man. Its length, however, was two yards and five inches, which circumstance excited the admiration of all present, and of myself more especially, whose intention it was to send it to the archbishop of Chuquisaca, as an object of singular curiosity. I was unable to do this; since, in my endeavour to bind it up for carriage, it fell from my hands, and brake in four pieces. In my rage, I threw the fragments from the side of the hill into the valley beneath."—Father Francisco Gonzales Laguna, ex-provincial of the order of Clerigos Agonizantes, correspondent of the royal botanical garden, and superintendent of the objects of natural history sent from Peru, had in his possession, and has consequently remitted to the royal cabinet of natural history of Madrid, a petrified tooth, very perfect in its configuration, which weighed five pounds three ounces, and was found on the heights of Escayache, in the department of Tarija. We have at this time before us a tooth, one of the incisors, of the size of a clenched hand, in the same manner petrified and perfe6l, which was found in a moor in the vicinity of the mission of las Salinas.

However superficially these petrifications may be considered, it must appear evident that they cannot belong to human bones. To the end that they should be deemed of that description, it would be necessary to suppose the possibility of the fabulous generation of the Titans, who scaled the heavens to dethrone Jupiter. We are but little aided by conjedtures, in the belief that they are the fragments of the skeleton of some enormous quadraped