tower, with an amount of interest which seems now to be considered hardly respectable.

This immense creature, long known as the gigantic boy of Willingham, was called Thomas Hall and was the son of a little father and almost a little mother. He himself, at his entrance upon this scene, was only a fine lusty baby, but he soon began to grow at a rate which astonished the whole neighbourhood, and when two years and eleven months old he was more than three feet nine inches high. Two months later he had reached the height of three feet eleven, growing at the rate of nearly an inch a month. Nearly a twelvemonth after he had attained the height of four feet five inches, so that had he grown to manhood at this rate he would have been at least nine or ten feet high.

The cause of the first check in his growth appears to have been extreme stuffing. After his third year he was taken about for a show and created an extraordinary sensation. But he was so crammed that he soon learned to care for nothing but dainties, and was frequently "debauched with wine;" a nice state of matters for a child three years old. The natural upshot was that he had a crop of boils, fell into ill health, and was checked in his growth. Previously he had been but a small eater and drinker.

His bulk and strength were quite proportionate to his great height. Before he was three years old the calf of his leg was above ten inches round, and he weighed, in his "cloaths," four stone two pounds; when five years old he weighed, even after his illness, upwards of six stone. His strength was prodigious; when less than four years old, Mr. Dawkes saw him take a hammer, seventeen pounds' weight, and throw

it from him to a considerable distance, and when little more than three years old he could place a large cheshire cheese upon his head, and lift a runlet (two gallons Winchester measure) full of ale to his mouth and drink freely from it. By this time he was the champion of the school; boys of seven or eight years had no chance against him; he never condescended to fight with them; he simply collared them and laid them on the ground. Sometimes at a later date he would offer to fight all the boys in the school, two at a time, and threaten to put them in his pocket. When he was five years old and still suffering from illness, Mr. Dawkes got him to exhibit his strength. A wheelbarrow of uncommon size and very heavy, being made of green wood, was selected; one of the biggest boys in the school got into it and Tom trundled him off with ease. Two of the biggest boys then got in, and the young Anak made it move two rotations of the wheel." This was all he could do-and not amiss either, as the two boys weighed twelve stone two pounds and he was not well.

Even at a very early age his voice was like a man's, "very groom," one of his biographers quaintly calls it. When three years old he seems to have possessed as much sense as boys of five or six, and by the time he had passed his fifth year he behaved himself in every way as a grown man. He was extremely fond of music, sculpture, and painting, and "seemed rather inclined to mechanics than to any other kind of learning." His look was rather savage and always sedate. Though never violent or cruel he seems to have had as little of love as of fear in his composition, and of the latter he had certainly little enough for he

was as "indomitable as a panther" except with Mr. Dawkes, who kept him in awe by threatening him with his dissecting-knife. Even this gentleman never seems to have succeeded, notwithstanding the extreme interest he took in the young monster and the frequent valuable presents he made him, in thoroughly gaining his affections. Always cold and gloomy after his illness, he grew more silent as his short life drew to a close.

In January, 1747, Mr. Dawkes found he was ill of fever and kindly sent him some medicine. This the boy refused to take and his biographer heard nothing more of him till June in the same year, when meeting Dr. Heberden, he was informed by him that the poor lad had got "a Phthisis Pulmonalis," or in other words was dying of consumption. The kind-hearted surgeon accordingly went to see him. Two days afterwards he quietly breathed his last, having only grown one inch in the preceding eight months. His strong, natural courage never deserted him and he viewed the approach of death with perfectly undisturbed fortitude; though he disliked to talk about it as he did about most other matters. Some months prior to this he rejoiced in a thick pair of whiskers and had a beard. Old age seemed to gather fast upon him towards his end; his corpse had all the appearance grey hairs excepted, of a man who had died at extreme old age, so that the story told by Pliny of a boy who at three years of age was four feet high, and that of the lad mentioned by Craterus who married and died, leaving issue, in his seventh year, are not so profoundly improbable after all.

There can be little doubt on the mind of any one

who has read Mr. Dawkes's narrative that it is extremely accurate; it bears internal evidence of this. Lord Sandwich who had seen the boy, could not believe that he was so young, but Mr. Dawkes having "happened into" Lord Sandwich's company, the subject was mooted, and such a host of witnesses and affidavits was brought forward that none but those silly people who pride themselves upon their incredulity could refuse to believe.

Mr. White, an eminent surgeon recently dead, mentions a boy who used to come to his house and who was three feet two inches high when only two years and a half old, was built like a Farnese Hercules and able to lift forty pounds with ease. M. Breschet showed the phrenologist Spurzheim a boy who at three years of age was three feet six and threequarters. Mr. South, the surgeon, had under his care a boy who at little more than three years old was three feet seven high, weighed four stone eight pounds and had a splendid development of muscle. I confess myself however unable to give any further account of these prodigies, as I have not been fortunate enough to trace their subsequent career in the least.

Mr. Cheselden published an account* of a skeleton dug up in the site of a roman camp. This great anatomist and surgeon estimated the height to have been eight feet four in the living person. It is stated in the Annual Register for 1763 that some workmen who were digging a vault under the master's apartments in the Charter House, came upon a very large skeleton,

Philosophical Transactions.

the thigh bone being two feet two inches in length and the other bones in proportion, though it is not said whether any person competent to decide this point ever saw them. In the same work and for the same year it is stated that a gentleman who rented the lime quarries at Fulwell Hill near Monkwearmouth, Durham, in the year 1759, while digging in search of stone removed a ridge of limestone and rubbish, in the midst of which was found the skeleton of a human being which was measured in his presence and proved to be nine feet six inches in length, the shin-bone or larger bone of the leg being two feet three inches long. The head lay to the west, and was defended from the superincumbent earth by four large stones. The measurement may have been incorrect, but the kind of soil is just that in which we might expect to meet human remains, and the mode of burying has a strong resemblance to that practised in the stone age. Indeed I have sometimes wondered whether some of the immense tombs thought to have been raised over the bodies of kings might not have been piled up over the frame of some mammal of a race fast verging to extinction, the tradition of which gradually became indistinct and then lost.

It seems strange that we can get at no reliable account of the Patagonian giants. Commodore Byron said that out of a body of about five hundred Patagonians whom he saw, few were less than seven feet and none less than six feet six inches. While Byron was gazing at them in wonder his first lieutenant Mr. Cumming came up and was as much astonished as the commodore. "I could not," says Byron, "but smile at the astonishment which I saw expressed in