GEOLOGY. 287 



TVHAT BECOMES OF THE SKELETONS OF WILD ANIMALS AFTER 



DEATH ? 



THE curious in natural history have frequently noticed, that they 

 never met with, in the fields or forests, the skeletons of animals, such 

 as hares and rabbits, that live in a natural state, and though rewards 

 for such skeletons were offered to gamekeepers and others, none were 

 ever brought to them. The Count de Montlosier had noticed this cu- 

 rious fact, and it had occurred to him to examine various caves in the 

 neighbourhood of his residence, but he found no skeletons, till one day 

 he entered a cave which had previously been passed over on account of 

 its small entrance, and there he discovered a vast number of skeletons, 

 which appeared to be those of hares or rabbits. The bones were per- 

 fect, and the cartilages preserved, showing that they could not have 

 been brought there by any beasts of prey. This fact is stated in the 

 Count's recently published memoirs. Ibid. 



FOSSIL ELEPHANT AND MASTODON FROM AFRICA. 



M. GERVAIS stated to the French Academy, on March 12th, that 

 he had just received from Algiers a drawing of the molar tooth of 

 a fossil elephant, whose genus is very easily recognized, and which 

 indicates a species more resembling those found in a fossil state in Eu- 

 rope, than the present African elephant. This tooth was found at 

 Cherchell, in the province of Oran. Sicily has hitherto been the south- 

 ernmost point on the Mediterranean where the fossil elephant has been 

 found. 



At the same tune he also mentioned the discovery, near Constantine, 

 of some fossil remains of mastodons. Though fossil remains of this 

 animal have been previously found in all the other portions of the world, 

 these are the first discovered in Africa. The remains found are a tooth 

 and a rib, and, as far as can be judged from a drawing, they belonged to 

 an animal more resembling the Mastodon brevirostre, or the arvernensis t 

 than the Mastodon angustidens. 



MAMMALIAN REMAINS IN NEW YORK. 



PROFESSOR REDFIELD exhibited to the American Association speci- 

 mens of mammalian remains, which had been found in Broome County, 

 on an elevated ridge separating the Delaware from the Susquehanna 

 Rivers. Whatever causes, observed Mr. Redfield, may be assigned 

 for the occurrence of these animal remains in this locality, we must 

 admit that this deposit took place at a period anterior to that in which 

 the present level of the railway and the general surface of the country 

 adjacent became covered with the drift in its existing form ; or at least 

 anterior to the vast period in which the incumbent materials, forty feet 

 in depth, have been accumulated. The overlying deposits appear 

 not to differ materially from those which cover many other portions of 

 the contiguous country ; while there are other portions, more exposed, 

 in which large and rounded boulders and worn pebbles are thickly dis- 



