a person of extraordinary bulk and stature.

The romances of all ages have furnished us with so many extravagant accounts of giants of incredible bulk and strength, that the existence of such people is now generally disbelieved. It is commonly thought, that the stature of men hath been the same in all ages; and some have even pretended to demonstrate the impossibility of the existence of giants mathematically. Of these our countryman M'Laurin hath been the most explicit. "In general (says he) it will easily appear, that the efforts tending to destroy the cohesion of beams arising from their own gravity only, increase in the quadruplicate ratio of their lengths: but that the opposite efforts tending to preserve their cohesion, increase only in the triplicate proportion of the same lengths. From which it follows, that the greater beams must be in greater danger of breaking than the lesser similar ones; and that though a lesser beam may be firm and secure, yet a greater similar one may be made so long, that it will necessarily break by its own weight. Hence Galileo justly concludes, that what appears very firm, and succeeds very well in models, may be very weak and infirm, or even fall to pieces by its own weight, when it comes to be executed in large dimensions according to the model. From the same principle he argues, that there are necessary limits in the operations of nature and art, which they cannot surpass in magnitude. Were trees of a very enormous size, their branches would fall by their own weight. Large animals have not strength in proportion to their size; and if there were any land animals much larger than those we know, they could hardly move, and would be perpetually subject to the most dangerous accidents. As to the animals of the sea, indeed the case is different; for the gravity of the water in a great manner sustains those animals; and in fact these are known sometimes to be vastly larger than the greatest land animals. Nor does it avail against this doctrine to tell us, that bones have sometimes been found which were supposed to have belonged to giants of immense size; such as the skeletons mentioned by Strabo and Pliny, the former of which was 60 cubits high, and the latter 46: for naturalists have concluded on just grounds, that in some cases these bones had belonged to elephants; and that the larger ones were bones of whales, which had been brought to the places where they were found by the revolutions of nature that have happened in past times. Though it must be owned, that there appears no reason why there may not have been men who have exceeded by some feet in height the tallest we have seen."

It will easily be seen, that arguments of this kind can never be conclusive; because, along with an increase of stature in any animal, we must always suppose a proportional increase in the cohesion of the parts of its body. Large works sometimes fail when constructed on the plan of models, because the cohesion of the materials whereof the model is made, and of the large work, are the same; but a difference in this respect will produce a very remarkable difference in the ultimate result. Thus, suppose a model is made of firwood, the model may be strong and firm enough; but a large work made also of fir, when executed according to the plan of the model, may be so weak that it will fall to pieces by its own weight. If, however, we make use of iron for the large work instead of fir, the whole will be sufficiently strong, even though made exactly according to the plan of the model. The like may be said with regard to large and small animals. If we could find an animal whose bones exceeded in hardness and strength the bones of other animals as much as iron exceeds fir, such an animal might be of a monstrous size, and yet be exceedingly strong. In like manner, if we suppose the flesh and bones of a giant to be greatly superior in hardness and strength to the bones of other men, the great size of his body will be no objection at all to his strength. The whole of the matter therefore concerning the existence of giants must rest on the credibility of the accounts we have from those who pretend to have seen them, and not on any arguments drawn a priori.

In the Scripture we are told of giants, who were produced from the marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men. This passage indeed has been differently interpreted, so as to render it doubtful whether the word translated giants does there imply any extraordinary stature. In other parts of Scripture, however, giants, with their dimensions, are mentioned in such a manner that we cannot possibly doubt; as in the case of Og king of Bashan, and Goliath. In a memoir read before the Academy of Sciences at Rouen, M. Le Cat gives the following account of giants that are said to have existed in different ages.

"Profane historians have given seven feet of height..." Giant. to Hercules their first hero; and in our days we have seen men eight feet high. The giant who was shown in Rouen in 1735, measured eight feet some inches. The emperor Maximian was of that size; Shenkius and Platerus, physicians of the last century, saw several of that stature; and Goropius saw a girl who was ten feet high.—The body of Orestes, according to the Greeks, was eleven feet and a half; the giant Galbarra, brought from Arabia to Rome under Claudius Caesar, was near ten feet; and the bones of Secondilla and Pusio, keepers of the gardens of Sallust, were but six inches shorter. Funnam, a Scotsman, who lived in the time of Eugene II., king of Scotland, measured eleven feet and a half; and Jacob le Maire, in his voyage to the Straits of Magellan, reports, that on the 17th of December 1615, they found at Port Desire several graves covered with stones; and having the curiosity to remove the stones, they discovered human skeletons of ten and eleven feet long. The chevalier Scory, in his voyage to the peak of Teneriffe, says, that they found in one of the sepulchral caverns of that mountain the head of a Guanche which had 80 teeth, and that the body was not less than 15 feet long. The giant Ferragus, slain by Orlando nephew of Charlemagne, was 18 feet high. Rioland, a celebrated anatomist, who wrote in 1614, says, that some years before there was to be seen in the suburbs of St Germain the tomb of the giant Isoret, who was 20 feet high. In Rouen, in 1509, in digging in the ditches near the Dominicans, they found a stone tomb containing a skeleton whose skull held a bushel of corn, and whose shin bone reached up to the girdle of the tallest man there, being about four feet long, and consequently the body must have been 17 or 18 feet high. Upon the tomb was a plate of copper, whereon was engraved, "In this tomb lies the noble and puissant lord the chevalier Ricon de Vallemont, and his bones." Platerus, a famous physician, declares, that he saw at Lucerne the true human bones of a subject which must have been at least 19 feet high. Valence in Dauphine boasts of possessing the bones of the giant Bucart, tyrant of the Vivarais, who was slain with an arrow by the count de Cabillon his vassal. The Dominican had a part of the shin bone, with the articulation of the knee, and his figure painted in fresco, with an inscription, showing that this giant was 22 feet and a half high, and that his bones were found in 1705, near the banks of the Morderi, a little river at the foot of the mountain of Crussol, upon which (tradition says) the giant dwelt.

January 11, 1613, some masons digging near the ruins of a castle in Dauphine, in a field, which (by tradition) had long been called the giant's field, at the depth of 18 feet discovered a brick tomb 30 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet high; on which was a gray stone, with the words Thentobochus Rex cut thereon. When the tomb was opened, they found a human skeleton entire, 25 feet and a half long, 10 feet wide across the shoulders, and five feet deep from the breast bone to the back. His teeth were about the size each of an ox's foot, and his shin bone measured four feet.—Near Mazarino, in Sicily, in 1516, was found a giant 30 feet high; his head was the size of an hogshead, and each of his teeth weighed five ounces. Near Palermo, in the valley of Mazara, in Sicily, a skeleton of a giant 30 feet long was found, in the year 1548; and another of 33 feet high, in 1550; and many curious persons have preserved several of these gigantic bones.

"The Athenians found near their city two famous skeletons, one of 34 and the other of 36 feet high.

"At Totu, in Bohemia, in 758, was found a skeleton, the head of which could scarce be encompassed by the arms of two men together, and whose legs, which they still keep in the castle of that city, were 26 feet long. The skull of the giant found in Macedonia, September 1691, held 210 pounds of corn.

"The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane, who treated this matter very learnedly, does not doubt these facts; but thinks the bones were those of elephants, whales, or other enormous animals.

"Elephants bones may be shown for those of giants; but they can never impose on connoisseurs. Whales, which, by their immense bulk, are more proper to be substituted for the largest giants, have neither arms nor legs; and the head of that animal hath not the least resemblance to that of a man. If it be true, therefore, that a great number of the gigantic bones which we have mentioned have been seen by anatomists, and by them have been reputed real human bones, the existence of giants is proved."

With regard to the credibility of all or any of these accounts, it is difficult to determine anything. If, in any castle of Bohemia, the bones of a man's leg 26 feet in length are preserved, we have indeed a decisive proof of the existence of a giant in comparison of whom most others would be but pigmies. Nor indeed could these bones be supposed to belong to an elephant: for an elephant itself would but be a dwarf in comparison of such an enormous monster. But if these bones were really kept in any part of Bohemia, it seems strange that they have not been frequently visited, and particular descriptions of them given by the learned who have travelled into that country. It is certain, however, that there have been nations of men considerably exceeding the common stature. Thus, all the Roman historians inform us, that the Gauls and Germans exceeded the Italians in size; and it appears that the Italians in those days were of much the same stature with the people of the present age. Among these northern nations, it is also probable, that there would be as great differences in stature as there are among the present race of men. If that can be allowed, we may easily believe that some of the barbarians might be called giants, without any great impropriety. Of this superiority of size, indeed, the historian Florus gives a notable instance in Teutobulus, above mentioned, king of the Teutones: who being defeated and taken prisoner by Marius, was carried in triumph before him at Rome, when his head reached above the trophies that were carried in the same procession.

But whether these accounts are credited or not, we are very certain, that the stature of the human body is by no means absolutely fixed. We ourselves are a kind of giants in comparison of the Laplanders; nor are these the most diminutive people to be found upon the earth. The Abbé la Chappe, in his journey into Siberia in order to observe the last transit of Venus, passed through a village inhabited by people called Wotocks. Wolliacks, neither men nor women of whom were above four feet high. The accounts of the Patagonians also, which cannot be entirely discredited, render it very probable, that somewhere in South America there is a race of people very considerably exceeding the common size of mankind, and consequently that we cannot altogether discredit the relations of giants handed down to us by ancient authors; though what degree of credit we ought to give them is not easy to be determined. See Patagonia.

Rebel Giants, in ancient mythology, were the sons of Cætus and Terra. According to Hesiod, they sprang from the blood of the wound which Cætus received from his son Saturn, and Hyginus calls them sons of Tartarus and Terra. They are represented as men of uncommon stature, with strength proportioned to their gigantic size. Some of them, as Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, had each 52 heads and 100 arms, and serpents instead of legs. They were of a terrible aspect, their hair hung loose about their shoulders, and their beard was suffered to grow unmolested. Pallene and its neighbourhood was the place of their residence. The defeat of the Titans, to whom they were nearly related, incensed them against Jupiter, and they all conspired to dethrone him. Accordingly they reared Mount Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa; and from thence attacked the gods with huge rocks, some of which fell into the sea and became islands, and others fell on the earth and formed mountains. Jupiter summoned a council of the gods; when being informed that it was necessary to obtain the assistance of some mortal, he by the advice of Pallas called up his son Hercules; and with the aid of this hero he exterminated the giants Enceladus, Polybotes, Alcyon, Porphyron, the two sons of Alceus, Ephialtes, Oithos, Eurytus, Clytus, Tithys, Pallas, Hippolites, Agrius, Thoon, and Typhon; the last of whom it was more difficult to vanquish than all the others. Jupiter having thus gained a complete victory, cast the rebels down to Tartarus, where they were to receive the full punishment of their enormous crimes: according to the accounts of some of the poets, he buried them alive under Mount Athos and different islands.

Giants Causeway, a vast collection of basaltic pillars in the county of Antrim, on the north coast of Ireland. See Basaltes.

The principal or grand causeway consists of a most regular arrangement of many hundred thousands of columns of a black kind of rock, very hard: almost all of them are of a pentagonal figure, but so closely and compactly situated on their sides, though perfectly distinct from top to bottom, that scarce any thing can be introduced between them. The columns are of an unequal height and breadth; some of the highest, visible above the surface of the strand, and at the foot of the impending angular precipice, may be about 20 feet; they do not exceed this height, at least none of the principal arrangement. How deep they are fixed in the strand, was never yet discovered. This grand arrangement extends nearly 200 yards, visible at low water; how far beyond is uncertain: from its declining appearance, however, at low water, it is probable it does not extend under water to a distance anything equal to what is seen above. The breadth of the principal causeway, which runs out in one continued range of columns, is, in general, from 20 to 30 feet; at one place or two it may be nearly 40 for a few Causeway yards. In this account are excluded the broken and scattered pieces of the same kind of construction, that are detached from the sides of the grand causeway, as they do not appear to have ever been contiguous to the principal arrangement, though they have frequently been taken into the width: which has been the cause of such wild and dissimilar representations of this causeway, which different accounts have exhibited. The highest part of this causeway is the narrowest, at the very foot of the impending cliff from whence the whole projects, where, for four or five yards, it is not above ten or fifteen feet wide. The columns of this narrow part incline from a perpendicular a little to the westward, and form a slope on their tops, by the very unequal height of the columns on the two sides, by which an ascent is made at the foot of the cliff, from the head of one column to the next above, gradually, to the top of the great causeway, which, at the distance of half a dozen yards from the cliff, obtains a perpendicular position, and lowering in its general height, widens to about 20 or between 20 and 30 feet, and for 100 yards nearly is always above water. The tops of the columns for this length being nearly of an equal height, they form a grand and singular parade, that may be easily walked on, rather inclining to the water's edge. But from high water mark, as it is perpetually washed by the beating surges on every return of the tide, the platform lowers considerably, and becomes more and more uneven, so as not to be walked on but with the greatest care. At the distance of 150 yards from the cliff, it turns a little to the east for 20 or 30 yards, and then sinks into the sea. The figure of these columns is almost unexceptionably pentagonal, or composed of five sides; there are but very few of any other figure introduced: some few there are of three, four, and six sides, but the generality of them are five-sided, and the spectator must look very nicely to find any of a different construction: yet what is very extraordinary, and particularly curious, there are not two columns in ten thousand to be found, that either have their sides equal among themselves, or whose figures are alike. Nor is the composition of these columns or pillars less deserving the attention of the curious spectator. They are not of one solid stone in an upright position; but composed of several short lengths, curiously joined, not with flat surfaces, but articulated into each other like ball and socket, or like the joints in the vertebrae of some of the larger kind of fish, the one end at the joint having a cavity, into which the convex end of the opposite is exactly fitted. This is not visible, but by disjoining the two stones. The depth of the concavity or convexity is generally about three or four inches. And what is still farther remarkable of the joint, the convexity, and the correspondent concavity, is not conformed to the external angular figure of the column, but exactly round, and as large as the size or diameter of the column will admit; and consequently as the angles of these columns are in general extremely unequal, the circular edges of the joint are seldom coincident with more than two or three sides of the pentagon, and from the edge of the circular part of the joint to the exterior sides and angles they are quite plain. It is still Giants still farther very remarkable, likewise, that the articulations of those joints are frequently inverted; in some the concavity is upwards, in others the reverse. This occasions that variety and mixture of concavities and convexities on the tops of the columns, which is observable throughout the platform of this causeway, yet without any discoverable design or regularity with respect to the number of either. The length also of these particular stones, from joint to joint, is various: in general, they are from 18 to 24 inches long; and, for the most part, longer toward the bottom of the columns than nearer the top, and the articulation of the joints something deeper. The size or diameter likewise of the columns is as different as their length and figure; in general, they are from 15 to 20 inches in diameter. There are really no traces of uniformity or design discovered throughout the whole combination, except in the form of the joint, which is invariably by an articulation of the convex into the concave of the piece next above or below it; nor are there any traces of a finishing in any part, either in height, length, or breadth, of this curious causeway. If there is here and there a smooth top to any of the columns above water, there are others just by, of equal height, that are more or less convex or concave, which show them to have been joined to pieces that have been washed, or by other means taken off. And undoubtedly those parts that are always above water have, from time to time, been made as even as might be; and the remaining surfaces of the joints must naturally have been worn smoother by the constant friction of weather and walking, than where the sea, at every tide, is beating upon it and continually removing some of the upper stones and exposing fresh joints. And farther, as these columns preserve their diameters from top to bottom, in all the exterior ones, which have two or three sides exposed to view, the same may with reason be inferred of the interior columns whose tops only are visible. Yet what is very extraordinary, and equally curious, in this phenomenon, is, that notwithstanding the universal dissimilitude of the columns, both as to their figure and diameter, and though perfectly distinct from top to bottom, yet is the whole arrangement so closely combined at all points, that hardly a knife can be introduced between them either on the sides or angles.

The cliffs at a great distance from the causeway, especially in the bay to the eastward, exhibit at many places the same kind of columns, figured and joined in all respects like those of the grand causeway: some of them are seen near to the top of the cliff, which in general, in these bays to the east and west of the causeway, is near 300 feet in height; others again are seen about midway, and at different elevations from the strand. A very considerable exposure of them is seen in the very bottom of the bay to the eastward, near a hundred rods from the causeway, where the earth has evidently fallen away from them upon the strand, and exhibits a most curious arrangement of many of these pentagonal columns, in a perpendicular position, supporting, in appearance, a cliff of different strata of earth, clay, rock, &c. to the height of 130 feet or more, above. Some of these columns are between 30 and 40 feet high, from the top of the sloping bank below them; and, being longest in the middle of the arrangement, shortening on either hand in view, they have obtained the appellation of organs, from a rude likeness in this particular to the exterior or frontal tubes of that instrument; and as there are few broken pieces on the strand near it, it is probable that the outside range of columns that now appears is really the original exterior line, to the seaward, of this collection. But how far they extend internally into the bowels of the incumbent cliff, is unknown. The very substance, indeed, of that part of the cliff which projects to a point, between the two bays on the east and west of the causeway, seems composed of this kind of materials; for besides the many pieces that are seen on the sides of the cliff that circulate to the bottom of the bays, particularly the eastern side, there is, at the very point of the cliff, and just above the narrow and highest part of the causeway, a long collection of them seen, whose heads or tops just appearing without the sloping bank, plainly show them to be in an oblique position, and about half way between the perpendicular and horizontal. The heads of these, likewise, are of mixed surfaces, convex and concave, and the columns evidently appear to have been removed from their original upright, to their present inclining or oblique position, by the sinking or falling of the cliff.