Dundee Elephant

The elephant was subsequently dissected and described by the Dundee apothecary-surgeon Patrick Blair who published his findings in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1710.

Twelve months later, the elephant was to be found performing its tricks in the Italian towns of Bologna and Lucca; early the following year she was back across the Alps, visiting Bremen in the north of Germany and Stargard in western Poland, and in October once more in Leipzig.

On Verhagen's retirement, Jan Jansson rented the elephant from him on a three-year lease, and in 1698 took the animal to France, where she appeared in Nantes and Paris.

Gregorius Janssen (he used this spelling of his surname) signed a contract with Verhagen to rent the elephant for a period of three years, paying a sum of 3,000 guilders per annum.

The theatre impresario Christopher Rich was keen to hire the elephant as a novelty act to be inserted into any play or farce that he might put on.

However, this plan fell through when his builder advised him that any attempt to widen the doors to permit the elephant's entrance on stage would cause the entire building to collapse.

In March 1702, Verhagen apparently agreed to sell the elephant to a bird-merchant of London, David Randal, for one thousand pounds Sterling.

[11] On the evening of Friday, 26 April 1706 (the date is in the Gregorian "old" style), the elephant collapsed at the side of the road between Broughty Ferry and Dundee.

Captain George Yeaman, provost and later MP of Dundee, organised a guard to be set up, to prevent local people from damaging the corpse.

Abraham Sever, in the meantime, obtained from Yeaman a certificate that he had done the elephant 'no designed injury' – which he required to avoid paying a penalty to Verhagen's executors – and he and his party made their way back to the Netherlands.

[13] Over the course of the next few weeks, Blair carefully and scientifically dissected and anatomised the elephant, studying every organ, limb, muscle and bone.

According to a statement made by a Dundee gentleman in 1825, this museum also contained the skeletons of local worthies, including George Yeaman.

The museum seems to have been abandoned in the early decades of the 19th century, and the contents were allegedly taken away by "a distinguished agriculturalist", with the bones "ground down and scattered for a top-dressing to some of the fields in Strathmore".