An Account of a Pair of Very Extraordinary Large Horns Found in Wapping Some Years since, with a Probable Account, Whence They Came, and to What Animal They Belonged. By Sir Hans Sloane, Baronet, President of the Royal Society, and of the College of Physicians

V. An Account of a Pair of very extraordinary large Horns found in Wapping some Years since, with a probable Account, whence they came, and to what Animal they belonged. By Sir Hans Sloane, Baronet, President of the Royal Society, and of the College of Physicians. Many Years since, Mr. Doyly, (who was a great searcher after Curiosities, and gave Name to a sort of Stuffs worn in Summer,) found a Pair of extraordinary large and strangely shaped Horns in a Cellar, or Warehouse, at Wapping, where they had suffered much by Worms and otherwise, being eaten pretty deep on their Surfaces, in many Places. They had lain there so long, that when he bought them, no body could inform him, either of the Country whence they came, or when, or how they had been lodged there. They resembled in several things the Horns of Goats, which made many People think, that they had belonged to an Animal of that kind, in all likelihood as large as the Mouse-Dear in America is of its kind. The Royal Society being informed of this matter, Mr. Hunt, their Operator at that time, made a design of them, on which Dr. Hook read a Lecture at a Meeting of the Society at Gresham-College. This Lecture and the Design, are, I think, lost; but I remember, that he suspected them to be the Horns of the Sukotyro, as the Chinese call it, it, or Sucotario, a very large and odd-shaped Beast, mentioned and figured by Nieuhoff in his Voyages and Travels to the East-Indies (a), where he gives the following Description of it: It is of the Bigness of a large Ox, with a Snout like a Hog, two long rough Ears, and a thick bushy Tail. The Eyes are placed upright in the Head, quite different from other Beasts; on the side of the Head next to the Eyes stand two long Horns, or rather Teeth, not quite so thick, as those of the Elephant. It feeds upon Herbage, and is but seldom taken. Many People thereupon went to see them at Mr. Doyly's, who was offered a considerable Sum of Money for them, but refused it, and after a very severe Sickness, wherein I attended him, very much, as he thought, to his Advantage, he made me a Present of them. They are both almost straight for a considerable length, and then turning crooked, they run on tapering towards a small and pretty sharp end. They are not round, but compressed and flattish, and have large transverse Sulci, or Furrows on their Surfaces, waved or undulated on their under parts. They differ some small matter in largeness. Measuring one [Fig. 1] from the great end, or Basis, A B, where it was fixed to the Head, along the outward Circumference, I found the length ACD to be six Feet, six Inches and a half, the length by the Line BD was four Feet 5 ½ Inches, the Diameter of the Basis A B was 6 ¼ Inches and its Circumference one Foot five Inches. This weighed 21 Pounds, 10 Ounces, and contained in the hollow part exactly five quarts of Water. In the other [Fig. 2.] the length of the outward Circumference ACD was six feet four inches, the Line BD four feet seven in- (a) P. 360. of the English Edition. ches, the Diameter of the Basis seven inches, and its Circumference one foot six inches. This weighed 21 pound, 13 ounces and a half, and contain'd in the hollow part 4 quarts and a pint, but would have held more, if it had not been very much broke at the large end. The Commander of an East-India Merchant Ship upon seeing them, told me, that he had seen such in the Indies on a large Buffalo's Head. I am inclined to think, that they must belong to a very large sort of Bulls or Cows, who are Natives of Ethiopia, and other of the midland Parts of Africa, and are mentioned by many of the Ancients, perhaps not without some fabulous Additions, though, which is strange, very few of the Modern Writers take any notice of them. Agatharchides*, a Cnidian who flourished about the CL. Olympiad, near 200 Years before Christ, is the first * This Agatharchides lived in the time of Ptolemeus Philometor, and is mentioned by several of the Antients, as an Historian, and a Philosopher of the Sect of the Peripateticks. Monsieur le Clerc (Histoire de la Medecine, p. 387.) ranks him among the Physicians of that time, though that was not properly his Profession; and the reason he gives for it is, because he described, in one of his Books, a Distemper which had not been taken notice of by Hippocrates, nor any other Physician before him. We are indebted for this Particular to Plutarch (Symposiakon Lib. VIII. Quest. 9.) who says, upon the Authority of Agatharchides, that the Nations about the Red Sea, amongst many strange Distempers, they are liable to, are troubled with a particular sort of Serpents, (or Worms,) which breed in the Legs and Arms, where they sometimes eat their way through, so as to show their Head; but upon touching are apt to slide back, and creeping between the Interstices of the Muscles, occasion intolerable Inflammations. Plutarch adds, that this Distemper (which appears plainly to be the Guinea-Worm, or Vena Medeni of Arabian Writers, of which see my Natural History of Jamaica, Vol. I. p. 126. and Vol. II. p. 190, 326. and which is a Distemper still subsisting, as well among those very Nations, of which Agatharchides speaks, as among the Negroes upon the Coasts of Guinea, and the Inhabitants of several Parts of Persia) had not been observed anywhere else, neither before, nor since the time of this Historian. first among the Ancients, who mentions and describes this large and voracious Bull; and it will appear by what follows, that most of the subsequent Writers have copied him. His Description of this Animal, in some Remains of his Treatise of the Red Sea, which are extant in Photius's Bibliotheca, (b) and were from thence printed in the Geographiae veteris Scriptores Graeci minores, published by Dr. Hudson, is, according to the Translation of Laurentius Rhodomannus, as follows, De Tauro Carnivoro. Omnia quae adhuc commemoravi, immanissimum & maximè indomitum est Taurorum genus, quod carnes vorat, magnitudine crassius domesticis, & pernicitate antecellens, insigniter rufum. Os ei ad aures usque deductum. Visus glauco colore magis rutilat quam Leoni. Cornua alias non secus atque aures movet, sed in pugna, ut firmo tenore consistant, facit. Ordo pilorum inversus, contra quam aliis animantibus. Bestias etiam validissimas agreditur, & caeteras omnes venatur, maximèque greges incolarum infestos reddit maleficio. Solum est lancea & arcu invulnerabile, quod in causa est, ut nemo id subigere, (quamvis multi id tentarint,) valuerit. Ideò rectè putatur, etiam a Troglodytis, fortitudine leonis, & velocitate equi, & robore Tauri praeditum, ferroque cedere necesse. Diodorus Siculus (Biblioth. Lib. III.) hath barely, and almost Word for Word, transcribed Agatharchides, and hath added only the following Particulars; that the Eyes of this Animal are shining at Night; that after it hath killed other Beasts, it devours them, and that, in its Attacks upon Flocks of Cattle, it is not to be terrified, either by the Strength of the Shepherds, or the great Number of Dogs. The following short Passage (b) P. 1364. Cap. XXXIX. relating to this same Animal is taken out of Strabo (c). Sunt & ibidem (in Arabia) tauri feri, ac qui carnem edant, nostras & magnitudine & celeritate longe exsuperantés; colore rufso. Pliny, Hist. Nat. Lib. VIII. C. XXI. seems likewise to have copied Agatharchides: His Words are, Sed atrocissimos habet (Æthiopia) Tauros Sylvestres, majores agrestibus, velocitate ante omnes, colore fulvos, oculis coeruleis, pilo in contrarium versó, rictu ad aures debiscente, juxta cornua mobilia, tergori duritia silicis, omne respuens vulnus. Feras omnes venantur: Ipfi non aliter, quam foveis capti, feritate semper intereunt. In the XLV Chapter of the said 8th Book of Pliny's Natural History, he mentions a sort of Indian Oxen, Boves Indici, quibus Camelorum altitudo traditur, cornua in latitudinem quaternorum pedum. It is not unlikely, but that these Indian Oxen are the same with the Æthiopian ones above described; especially if we suppose, that the Transcribers of Pliny have, by mistake wrote latitudinem instead of altitudinem. Solinus (d) hath barely copied Pliny, with this difference only, that he calls them Indicos Tauros, whereas Pliny himself hath described them amongst the Æthiopian Beasts, which might very well happen, Æthiopia being reckoned, by some of the Antients, as part of India. The description of Ælianus (e) agrees perfectly with that of Agatharchides, of whom, it seems, he also borrowed it; only he fixes the Size of these extraordinary Oxen to twice the Bigness of the common Grecian Ox. There is another Passage in Ælianus (f), which seems to relate, both to this large (c) Geogr. Lib. XVI. p. 775. Edit. Caſaubon. (d) Polyhistoris Cap. I. II. p. 58. Edit. Salm. (e) Hist. Animal Lib. XVII. c. 4; (f) Hist. Animal Lib. III.c. 34 kind of *Æthiopian* Oxen, and the Horns, now in my possession. His Words are, *Ptolomæo secundo ex India cornu allatum ferunt, quod tres amphoras caperet*: *Unde conjicere possimus bovem illum, à quo ejusmodi tantum cornu extitisset, maximum fuisse*. Ludolfus, in his *Historia Æthiopica*, (g) speaking of the large *Ethiopian Oxen*, conjectures, that they are the *Taurelephantes*, which Philostorgius, a Cappadocian, says, (h) were brought to Constantinople in his time, where he saw them. The Words of Philostorgius, as transcribed by Ludolf in his *Commentarius ad Historiam suam Æthiopicam* (i), are, *Habet & Terra illa maximos & vastissimos Elephants; imo & Taurelephantes, ut vocantur, quorum genus quoad caetera omnia bos maximus est, corio vero coloreque elephas, & fermè etiam magnitudine*. From all these several Writers it appears, that there is in *Æthiopia* (and probably the midland parts of *Africa*, where Travellers seldom come) a very large Animal of the *bovinum genus*, at least twice as big as our Bulls or Oxen, with Horns proportionably large, but otherwise differing from them in many respects. It is true, that in the accounts of uncommon things, given by antient Writers, an allowance must sometimes be made for something fabulous mix'd with what is true, which is the less surprizing, as they had many things only by hear-say: but as to this large sort of Bulls, it is confirmed by modern Writers, that there is such an Animal in those Countries, though there is none, I know of, that hath given a description of it in the least satisfactory. Ludolf in --- (g) Lib. i. c. io. (h) Lib. III. c. ii. (i) P. 145. his *Historia Æthiopica*, (k) says, that there are in *Æthiopia* Bulls of an uncommon size, twice as large as those in Hungary and Russia; and that having shewn some of the largest Oxen in Germany to Gregory, an Abissynian (from whose Writings and Informations he collected the Materials for that Work) he said, they were but of a midling size. The Letters of the Jesuits frequently mention the largeness of these Oxen, and the said Ludoif cites the following passage out of a Letter of Alphonsus Mendezius Patriarch of *Æthiopia* dated June 1, 1666. *Buo grandissimi, di corna misuratamente grosse e lunghe, talmente, che nella corna di ciascuno di esse potea capire un otre piccolo di vino*: that is, very large Oxen, with vastly thick and long Horns one of which would contain a large Utter of Wine. F Bernier, in his account of the Great Mogul's Country, (m) says that among many Presents, which two *Æthiopian* Ambassadors should have presented to Aurengzeb there was a prodigious large Horn of a Bull, full of Civet, which having been measured by him he found the Basis or large end, to be half a foot in Diameter. This Horn, as Bernier farther observes, was brought by the Ambassadors to Delhi, the place of Residence of the Great Mogul; but it was not presented to him because, being distrust'd of Money, they had sold the Civet out of it, long before they came thither. Upon the whole, it seems to me, that these Horns, and likewise that mentioned by Bernier, are the Horns of a large sort of Bulls or Cows, in *Æthiopia*, and the --- (k) Lib. I. c. 10. (l) Comment. in Hist. Æthiop. p. 145. (m) Tome II. p. 43. inward parts of Africa, which, in all likelihood, is the same with that described by Agatharchides, Pliny, and those other ancient Writers mention'd above. But I cannot as yet, for want of a more accurate description, be certain, whither it is the same with the Sukotorio, or Sukotyro of Nieuhof \(^n\), though there is a good deal of reason to think, that it is. Geffner \(^o\) speaks of a very large Horn, which was hung by a Chain to a Pillar in the Minster, or Cathedral, of Strasburgh, and which is not unlikely to be of the same sort with these. He says, that being measured along the outward circumference, it was found to be four Roman Yards long, and he conjectures it to have been the Horn of a large old Ursus, which was hung up there, for its monstrous size, perhaps two or three hundred Years before his time. As to these, which are now produced before the Royal Society, 'tis very likely, that when the English had a great Commerce at Ormus, they were brought thither from some neighbouring Country, and afterwards carried over into England by some curious Person. \(^n\) Loc. supra citato. \(^o\) Icones Animal. Quadrup. Edit. 2d. Tigur. 1560. p. 34.