FAMILY ELEPHANTID.E. 101 



The principal localities of the Fossil Elephant in the United States, are the Bigbone Lick, 

 Kentucky ; Biggin Swamp and Stone, South Carolina ; Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, 

 Maryland, and Schooley's mountain in Monmouth county in New-Jersey. In this State we 

 are acquainted with but one locality. There is, however, in the Museum of the Albany 

 Institute, a portion of the tooth of an elephant said to have been found on the line of the Erie 

 canal, but the precise locality is not known. 



AMERICAN ELEPHANT. 



Elephas americanus. 

 PLATE XXXII. FIG. 2. —(CABINET OF THE LYCEUM.) 



It is with some hesitation that I venture to designate, under a new name, a species founded 

 on specimens of teeth, which appear to differ widely from any hitherto met in this country. 

 The tooth found on the banks of the Susquehannah, near Tioga, March, 1786, and figured in 

 the Columbian Magazine, approaches it somewhat, but can scarcely be referred to the same 

 species. The specimens above alluded to were found in a diluvial formation near the Irondi- 

 quoit river in Monroe county, ten miles east of the city of Rochester. According to a writer 

 in the American Journal, Vol. 32, p. 377, these remains consisted of a tusk and two molars, 

 one of which is in the Cabinet of the Lyceum, and is that figured in the plate. This is six 

 inches in its greatest depth ; and, as nearly as can be conjectured from the part which remains, 

 it must have been about eight inches long, and three in breadth on its grinding surface, which 

 is, however, too much injured to exhibit the ends of the enamel. There arc thirteen plates 

 in a space of five inches, and they are more compressed than in any fossil species with which 

 I am acquainted, being almost in contact, with very little interstitial substance. It is altogether 

 different from any fossil elephant hitherto described, and merits the distinct appellation of E. 

 americanus. 



Note. Texas appears to be a rich locality for elephantine bone.s. From the Houston Tele- 

 graph, April, 1840, we learn that a large collection of molars, tusks and other bones of the 

 Elephant, were found in the banks of a ravine about two miles below Bastrop, covered with a 

 bed of loam ten or twelve feet thick. A similar collection was oblained from the bed of the 

 Rio Brazos. They were associated with the teeth and tusks of the Mastodon, described in 

 the subsequent article. Some of the teeth are now in the Cabinet of the Lyceum of Natural 

 History, New-York. 



