Giants.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2908, 25 February 1893, Page 2

Giants.

Turner, the naturalist, declared thav he once saw upon the cr ast of Brazil, a race of gigantic (savages, one of whom was twelve feel in height. M. Thevet, of France, in his description of America,, published at Paris in 1575, asserted thai he saw and measured the sxeieton of a South American which was eleven feet live inches in length. The Chinese are said to claim tint in the- last centmy there were men in theii country who measured fitteeu feet in height. Josephus mentioned the c if c of a Jew who was ten feet two inches in height. Pliny telis of an Arabian knight, G'abara, nine feet nine inches, the tallest man in the days of Claudius. John Middleton born at Hale, in Lancashire in the time of James I, was nine feet three inches in height; his hand ' was seventeen inches long and eight and a half inches broad, say* Dr Plott in his 'Hiscory of Staffordshire. 1 The Irish fjianfc Murphy, contemporary with O'Brien, was eight feet ten inches. A skeleton in the Museum <f Trinity College, Dublin, is eight feet six inches in height, and that of Charier* Bryne, in the Museum of the CoUege of Surgeons, London, is eight feet f> ur inches. The tallest living man is Chting-tu-tiing, the Chinese giant. His height is eight feet three inches.