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334 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



A discovery of great interest to palaeontology has lately been made at 

 the gates of Constantina, (Algeria,) while making a cutting for the im- 

 provement of the approaches to that city, where a great part of the skele- 

 ton of some gigantic animal was found. The thigh and leg bones, the 

 vertebra?, the ribs, the upper part of the head, and several teeth were in a 

 very good state of preservation. The head is not less than eighty-five cen- 

 timeters from, the teeth to the nape, and forty-eight across the bone of the 

 forehead. The front part of the upper jaw has long teeth, and also tusks, 

 similar to those of a wild boar. The legs of the animal are about the size 

 of a horse ; and from the bend of the ribs, it is supposed that its size must have 

 been about four times that of an ordinary ox. Its head is somewhat sim- 

 ilar to that of the hippopotamus, and its mouth must have been of extraor- 

 dinary power. No name can be assigned to this animal, but it is con- 

 sidered probable that it may belong to the numerous family of pachy- 

 dermes. The ground wherein it was found is composed of a soft calcareous 

 rock of tertiary formation. 



A skeleton of a mastodon has been recently discovered in a marsh, 

 about ten miles from Poughkeepsie, New York. Its state of preservation 

 is not known, as it is yet but partially exhumed. This is the second 

 skeleton obtained from the vicinity of this city. 



A fossil skeleton of an elephant has recently been discovered by Mr. 

 Campbell, of the Hudson's Bay Company, on the sixty-first parallel of 

 latitude, on the west side of the Rocky Mountain chain, about fifteen 

 hundred feet above the sea-level. The skeleton, when first found, was 

 nearly entire, but unfortunately the greater portion of it was lost in a 

 lake by the carelessness of the Indians employed to transport it to a fur 

 port. 



In a recent communication to Silliman's Journal, Mr. W. P. Blake no- 

 tices a number of instances in which partial remains of the mastodon, and 

 elephas prirnigenius, have been found in California. The remains, princi- 

 pally teeth, appear to occur over a wide extent of country. 



Fossil Bones in, California. Dr. C. F. Y/inslow, in a letter to the Cali- 

 fornia Farmer, thus speaks of the occurrence of bones, fossils, &c., on the 

 Stanislaus River, California : About one and a half miles from the Stan- 

 islaus we came to the limestone cave, which has been often spoken of, of 

 late, as being the receptacle of human bones covered with calcareous de- 

 posits. This we did not enter, for lack of time. We had passed it about 

 half a mile before learning its whereabouts, 'and as the day was so hot, and 

 the sun advancing, we considered it best to pass without exploring it. 

 This we could dispense with the better, as we met a person who had ex- 

 plored it carefully, and who offered us fragments of human skeletons 

 which he had taken from the cave. These bones were dry and light, and 

 not impregnated or overlaid with calcareous spar, like others which I had 

 seen from the same cave. Heretofore obscurity had surrounded the his- 

 tory of the bones which had been found in the cave. But this person, on 

 returning from the cave, met an old Indian ; and having a good interpreter 



