His bones [are as] strong pieces of brass: his bones [are] as bars of iron. Than which nothing is stronger. The repetition is made for greater illustration and confirmation; but what is said is not applicable to the elephant, whose bones are porous and rimous, light and spongy for the most part, as appears from the osteology k of it; excepting its teeth, which are the ivory; though the teeth of the river horse are said to exceed them in hardness l; and artificers say m they are wrought with greater difficulty than ivory. The ancients, according to Pausanias n, used them instead of it; who relates, that the face of the image of the goddess Cybele was made of them: and Kircher o says, in India they make beads, crucifixes, and statues of saints of them; and that they are as hard or harder than a flint, and fire may be struck out of them. So the teeth of the morss, a creature of the like kind in the northern countries, are valued by the inhabitants as ivory p, for hardness, whiteness, and weight, beyond it, and are dearer and much traded in; Job 40:20; but no doubt not the teeth only, but the other bones of the creature in the text are meant.
k In Philosoph. Transact. vol. 5. p. 155, 156. l Odoardus Barbosa apud Bochart. ut supra. (Apud Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 5. c. 14. col. 758.) m Diepenses apud ib. n Arcadica, sive, l. 8. p. 530. o China cum Monument. p. 193. p Olaus Magnus, ut supra, (De Ritu. Septent. Gent.) l. 2. c. 19. Voyage to Spitzbergen, p. 115.