358 Cervus Americanua. 



nineteen inches long, apd a metacarpal bone of an adult animal 

 of the same species, subsequently disinterred at Big-bone-lick ; 

 these are of a deep black colour, of a dense and solid structure, 

 like the soundest of the mastodon bones. 



Still more recently, a large collection of fossil bones obtained 

 from Big-bone-lick, have been exhibited in the city of New 

 York ; among them were observed, the jaw, teeth, clavicle and 

 a tibia of the right leg of the Megalonyx laqueatus, the same 

 that are described and figured in the Amevicanci Monthly Jour- 

 nal of Geology and Natural Science of Philadelphia. 



Place in the Geological series. — Contemporaneoqs with thp 

 Big-bone-lick fossils, and probably also with bones of the ca- 

 verns of Germany, England, France, &c. ; but judging from 

 the appearance of the Megalonyx bones from White Cave, 

 Kentucky, they are still more recent than those of any extinct 

 fossil species hitherto discovered, with the probable exception 

 of the " Elk of Ireland." I have seen, in the museum of the 

 Dublin Society of Natural History, the lower portion of the 

 fore-leg of a cervine animal, with the skin, hair, and hoof sim- 

 ply desiccated, fpund in the peat-bogs of Ireland, along with 

 the bones of the fossil elk, of which animal it was supposed to 

 form a part ; it bears the closest analogy to the s^me part of 

 the North American moose-deer, {Cervus alces, Linn.) 



Most of the original specimens of the fossil bones of this ex- 

 tinct species are in the cabinet of Mr J. P. Wetherill, deposited 

 in the Hall of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. 

 Plaster casts have been taken, and the specimens thus multi- 

 plied are contained in many European cabinets ; among others, 

 we have furnished the " Jardin des Plantes,"" Paris, and the 

 Geological Society of London. 



ORDER RUMINANTIA. 



Gekus Cervus. 



C. Americanusj Harlan, 



Fauna Americana, p. 245 ; Wistar, Trans. Am. Philos. Soc. vol. i. new series, 

 p. 375, pi. 10, fig. 4. Fossil Elk of the United States of North America. 



The present fossil species was first established on a mutilated 

 5>kull in the cabinet of the American Philosophical Society, pre- 

 sented by the late President Jefferson ; the species appears to 



