Aquarium of Vulcan: Doctor Browne and the elephant

Elephants are mentioned in each of Sir Thomas Browne's major literary works. A little-known notebook description highlights his zoological interest in elephants, while his proto-archaeological speculations on bones in Urn-Burial along with his notebook entry on Fossil remains in Norfolk casts new light on the skeleton of a prehistoric elephant excavated at West Runton in 1995.

The newly qualified physician first declared an admiration of elephants in his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) remarking - 'ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromedaries and Camels; these I confess are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand'. Elsewhere the animal-loving doctor defends the elephant's appearance, objecting, 'I cannot tell by what Logick we call a Toad, a Bear, or an Elephant ugly'. [1]

In his subsequent publication, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) Browne methodically refutes numerous folk-lore beliefs and superstitions, including the misapprehension that the elephant has no joints. Browne's encyclopaedic work of scientific journalism consists of seven books in total. Many of its individual chapters, in particular those on animals in book three, are among the most readable and entertaining of all the learned doctor's writings. Indeed, the Argentinean author Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986) consulted book three of Pseudodoxia Epidemica extensively with its at turns erudite, pedantic and witty discussion on whether creatures such as the basilisk, salamander, unicorn, phoenix, gryphon and mermaid truly exist, when compiling his Book of Imaginary Creatures (1967).

Book three Of divers popular and received Tenents concerning Animals, which examined, prove either false or dubious opens with a refutation of the false belief that the elephant has no joints. Doctor Browne first calls upon his capacious and retentive memory, referencing the Roman historian Suetonius to inform his reader that-

‘Elephants have been instructed to walk on ropes, in public shows before the people’, as well as the historian's recording of 'that memorable show of Grammaticus wherein twelve Elephants danced unto the sound of music'.

Following discussion of the mechanics of motion in two and four legged creatures, introducing the words 'cylindrical' and 'locomotion' into English language while doing so, and having argued of the necessity of joints from his anatomical studies, Browne credulously notes that, 'some Elephants have not only written whole sentences,... but have also spoken' and then proposes that because elephants possess the necessary organs for speech, namely lips, teeth and chops, whether they, ‘might not be taught to speak, or become imitators of speech like Birds’. [2]

A detail from Peter Rodulfo's As the elephant laughed

Finally, and perhaps frustratingly to impatient readers, having consulted at great length two of his three determiners to acquire truth, namely, past authority and reason, Browne calls upon the primary source of his empirically-based science, 'occular observation', and remembers having seen an elephant in real life-

‘whereof not many years past, we have had the advantage in England, by an Elephant shewn in many parts thereof, not only in the posture of standing, but kneeling and lying down'. [3]

Browne's zoology, the study of animals, is exemplified in his little-known notebook description of an elephant in which he references his favourite zoologist of antiquity, Aristotle and with an precise and extensive vocabulary notes an elephant's anatomy, age, emotions, welfare and diet. Relying on the sense of touch to describe its skin, the size and roundness of elephant dung reminds him of his favourite pastime, the game of bowls. Browne's notebook entry on the elephant is worthy of full quotation.

'The trunck is lithe, tortil, flexible, extensible, contractile, butt when hee shrinks it up as in Anger, it becommeth short and as stiff and hard as a stake.

The 2 nostrills are plaine, and there is a hard tip at the upper end of the extremity of his trunck which helps to hold the faster.

Hee sleepes not with his trunck extended and hanging at length, butt bended & somewhat rolled about or neere his mouth, for the better security thereof from flies or anything that might gett into it. His tongue is short not large, & seemes as it were tongue tyed, so that hee cannot putt out the tongue. However when yong it makes a shift to suck, for it sucketh with the mouth not with the trunck. Hath very thinne & ill decernible lipps.

The teeth are very large 4 in number. The two large teeth somewhat reflecting upward: these are for his armes of defense and offence and help him, when hee kneeles or ariseth. The females as Aristotle sayeth, have them straight or bending downward, which afford them the better help and support when they are great with yongue.

Hayres under his chinne like a beard, some long black hayres about the ridge of his head and neck; about the bottom of his tayle which are bigge and harsh & stiffe like sticks. 2 Bunches like papps in the forepart of the breast by the arm pitts, and as Aristotle sayeth juxta pectus potius quam in pectore. Five kind of hoofes in each foot exceeding hard, but they pare them not. Hee riseth like a horse with his foreleggs first, not like a cowe.

Hee breakes wind often backward; coughs sometimes, snorts not, vomits not, sweates much about the pappes upon travell. Sleepes about 5 howers in a night: hee lyeth upon strawe and in very cold wether they cover him up with it at night. Being butt 8 yeares old they allowed him a pecke & a quarter of oates every morning and evening besides haye and bread when they showed him, wch came to 3 or 4 penny loaves a daye. Dungs in roundish lumps about the bignesse of bowlls.

He will take water sometimes & swimme, whereby hee refreseth and suppeyth his hard drye skinne and will suck up water in his trunck and spirt it about his body, and so moystens his skinne, wch is rugged and hard and as it were channel'd, and feels like rough tanned hides. [4]

Elephants are mentioned in Browne's discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Appropriate to its themes of Time and Death allusion is made in Urn-Burial to the elephant's graveyard and it ability for 'sepulture'. In The Garden of Cyrus such is the potency of the Quincunx pattern when employed in brick-wise formation (2:1:2) in ancient military strategy that the archetypal configuration effectively, 'defeated the mischief intended by the elephants'. And as such the elephant may be considered as a 'conjoyning' symbols uniting the two discourses which are highly polarised in theme, imagery and truth.

Just as Urn-Burial features Browne's interest in archaeology and The Garden of Cyrus with its mention of bees and butterflies, fish, birds, snakes and whales his interest in zoology, so too his study of elephants was both zoological and archaeological, reflecting his enquiries in the divided worlds of the living and the dead.

The philosophical discourse Urn-Burial (1658) was initially inspired by an archaeological find, as its author informs his reader -

'In a Field of old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty Urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, nor far from one another'.

Its however bones which are alluded to most in Urn-Burial (over fifty times) including a remarkable passage which anticipates and influences archaeological interpretative insights to the present day.

'It is no impossible Physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies; and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistences. A full spread Cariola shews a well-shaped horse behind, handsome formed sculls, give some analogie of fleshy resemblance. A criticall view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes....... Other parts make out their comproportions, and inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives conjecture of the principall faculties; Physiognomy outlives our selves, and ends not in our graves'. [5]

Browne's advocation of a forensic-like analysis of bones, of how they can be indicative of 'fleshy resemblance' in gender, ancestry and proportion, anticipates modern-day osteology (the study of bones) as well as modern-day illustrative realization of archaeological sites and artefacts. His proto-archaeological speculations acquire significance in light of the discovery and subsequent excavation of a near complete mammoth skeleton at West Runton on the Norfolk coast in 1995.

Its worthwhile remembering that much of the Norfolk coastline was once part of a prehistoric forest bed which was formed between 780,000 to 450,000 years ago. Known as the geological era of the Cromerian Stage, during the last ice-age or Pleistocene, the Cromerian Interglacial is the benchmark that all European countries use when studying their own geological deposits.

Browne's early account of coastal erosion and speculative analysis in Fossil Remains in Norfolk is significant in relation to archaeological discovery at West Runton. His description of 'one side of a lower jaw containing very large teeth petrified, far exceeding the teeth of the biggest ox' could be any number of prehistoric creatures including the Auroch, an extinct species of cattle, the last of which died in the early 17th century.

'This bone was found, about 2 year past by Winterton, on the sea shore in Norfolk. The cliff had been much broken by high tides & the rage of the sea, many hundred loads falling down as it often doth upon this coast, the cliffs being not rock butt earth. Upon the same coast, butt at some miles distance, divers great bones are said to have been found, & I have seen one side of a lower jaw containing very large teeth petrified, far exceeding the teeth of the biggest ox. It was found after a great flood near to the cliff, some thousand loads of earth being broken down by the rage of the sea. That it came not out of the sea it might bee conjectured because it was found so far from it, & from the colour, for if out of the sea it would have been whiter. When the outward crust is taken of, it answers the graine of the bones of whales & other cetaceous animals, comparing it with a piece of whales scull which I have by mee'. [6]

The West Runton skeleton is part of the elephantidae family, which includes both elephants and mammoths. The expert ostologist and archaeological illustrator Ms. J. Curl helpfully explains the sometimes complicated classification which exists between elephants and mammoths thus -

"The West Runton Mammoth (c.800,000 BCE) was called an elephant originally, and was an ancestor to the Woolly Mammoth (c.50,000 BCE to 15,000 BCE here in UK). Both terms are correct and confusing, especially for those working on them. The West Runton Mammoth was mainly a warm phase beast and more likely to be like an elephant, but that individual was close to a colder phase, so he was probably much hairier than most elephants today". [8]

Ms. J. Curl cleaning the molar teeth of the West Runton mammoth 1995

The West Runton mammoth skeleton is the best example of the species Mammuthus trogontherii to be unearthed so far, being 85% complete. Previous finds include two partial skeletons found in Germany and Russia, both of which were only about 10 to 15% complete. The mammoth was male, stood some 4 metres (13 ft) at the shoulder and would have weighed about 10 tonnes (11 short tons). This is twice the weight of the modern African elephant Loxodonta africana. [7]

Its recorded that at sometime or another Browne acquired an elephant's leg-bone for his anatomical studies and the largest of all land animals continued to interest him late in his life. His solitary work of fiction, Museum Clausum (circa 1673) a bizarre catalogue of imaginary, rumoured and lost books, pictures and rarities includes the landscape painting of -

'A Snow Piece, of Land and Trees covered with Snow and Ice, and Mountains of Ice floating in the Sea, with Bears, Seals, Foxes and variety of rare Fowls upon them'.

Also in Browne's surreal inventory Museum Clausum (the Closed Museum) inspired perhaps from an antique coin once in his collector's cabinet, there's the amusing thumb-nail sketch of-

'An Elephant dancing upon the Ropes with a Negro Dwarf upon his Back'. [9]