[Excerpts from Zacharias Uffenbach's diary of his visit to Oxford in 1710 in the company of his brother Johann Friedrich Uffenbach] More remarkable still was the Mappa Geographica of the kingdom of China drawn with the pen, which Dr. Bernard had had completed in that country at great
expense to himself. It is at least four times as large as our ordinary maps.
We also saw the bladder of a man which was easily a German ell long and which is said to bold at least four quarts.
Furthermore several panels or paintings by one Fuller, which portray the muscles of the human body drawn from the life very well.
Likewise the skeleton and stuffed skin of a woman who had had 18 husbands and was hanged because she had murdered 4 of them. The skin may with good reason be called tanned leather. Benthem makes mention of this skeleton also, p. 310, and says that it is kept in Collegio S. Johannis. Perhaps it was there at that time and
only brought here later. He is also mistaken when he mentions only 17 husbands, as there were 18. On p. 327, he also speaks of a stuffed Moor being here. But this is
absurd, as there is no such thing to be found in the place,
unless he took a complete mummy for a Moor. From
this it can be seen how badly one can err when a thing
is only superficially observed.
Further we saw a very large petrified fungus marinus and two large Spanish bamboos, or rather arundines or cannae, grown in India. One was thicker than an arm, the other somewhat
thinner and much longer than the whole room, about 30 feet, hanging diagonally on the wall.
Then there is
the dried hand of a supposed siren. It is about half as long again as a human hand and more or less like one
in appearance.