On Mastodontoid and Megatherioid Animals, 129 



beating against our inland escarpments of chalk, and wheh 

 our valleys and those of the opposite coasts of France may 

 have been fiords like those of Norway.* 



I also know that my friend Mr Lonsdale has long entertained 

 similar views, derived from his intimate acquaintance with the 

 escarpment of the oolitic strata ; along some of which he has 

 observed as perfect lines of dunes as those upon the sea-coast 

 of France, whilst in others he has been struck with their re- 

 semblance to many great dislocations of marine undercliffs, 

 whereby masses of the inferior oolite have been pitched into 

 inclined positions at the bottom of the adjacent valleys ; and 

 as 1 know that this subject is one which now occupies his at- 

 tention, I have strong hopes, that by his present residence 

 on the coast of Devonshire, he will be enabled to add mate- 

 rially to the exact conclusions which have been already drawn 

 in this class of researches. 



4. On Mastodontoid and Megatherioid Animals. — For a sea- 

 son our metropolis contained within it a magnificent ske- 

 leton of a Mastodontoid quadruped, which, in common with 

 all geologists and palaeontologists, I hoped to see perma- 

 nently established in our National Museum. This gigantic 

 animal was discovered by a persevering Prussian collector, 

 M. Koch, who for some time resided in the United States, 

 and who disinterred it, together with a great profusion of 

 heads, teeth, and numerous bones of similar animals, from 

 amid the alluvia of a tributary of the St Louis river, where 

 the chief remains had probably been an object of super- 

 stitious tradition on the part of the Indian tribes. It does 

 not appear whether the zealous Prussian had any scruples to 

 overcome ; but I presume they must have been considerable, 

 if I were to judge from my own experience in other wild 

 countries. In travelling along the eastern flanks of the Ural 

 Mountains, it was my lot to visit many sites of gold alluvia iu 

 which bones of the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds 

 are found, and for these remains the poor Bashkirs, the origi- 

 nal inhabitants of the tract, preserved so deep a veneration, 

 that, in freely permitting the search after the true wealth of 



* Elements of G'eology, vol. ii. pp. 3 — rS. 

 VOL. XXXV. NO. LXIX. JULY 1843. I 



