1897.] THE FOSSIL SLOTH AT BIG BOXE CAVE, TEXX. 37 



the help of the naturalist^ in a systematic attempt to penetrate the 

 crust of recent earth under foot, to trace man through a mixture 

 of the familiar vestiges of such animals as the deer, the bison, 

 the bear, the beaver, the muskrat and the wolf, still existing in 

 the American forest, and to follow him down into that older world 

 layer next below called the Pleistocene. There we have endeavored 

 to find, if possible, his bones still associated with the remains of 

 the extinct mastodon, the mammoth, the tapir, the giant beaver and 

 the fossil sloth. 



Much remains to be done over a wide territory, before the evi- 

 dence of American caves, for or against man's geological antiquity, 

 can be adequately collected or reasonably summed up. But already 

 in the territory examined in the eastern United States and Central 

 America, some landmarks seem to have been established in the pre- 

 Columbian darkness. 



Here are five vertebrae (three dorsal and two lumbar), a rib, a heel 

 bone (calcaneum), an astragalus, four vertebral plates (epiphyses) 

 and one epiphysis of a humerus, pertaining to an animal whose 

 name and history belong to the records of this Society, since the 

 first remains of the creature ever found in North America were 

 presented here by Thomas Jefferson on March lo, 1797. Struck 

 by the size of its formidable claws then shown, Jefferson' gave 

 it the name Megaloiiyx (great claw), afterwards adopted by 

 Cuvier. And I have hunted up at the Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 for comparison with my specimens, this other set of bones, the very 

 ones then exhibited by Jefferson, two of the lower limb (radius and 

 ulna), several of the foot (metacarpal), with a couple of claws, and 

 show them again here one hundred years later, where I wish to note 

 the fact that certain of them have been gnawed, like my specimens, 

 by rodents, though all are heavier than the latter, and much older 

 in appearance. 



^My grateful thanks are herewith returned to Prof. Cope for his identification 

 of the bones of the extinct sloth here referred to ; to Mr. S. N. Rhodes for identifi- 

 cation of the hair, quills and refuse of smaller animals ; while our study of the lay- 

 ers, and the removal of characteristic portions of the earth in small bags would 

 have signified less if Dr. Harrison Allen had not named for us the bats ; Mr. John- 

 son, of the Wagner Institute, an insect ; Prof. Heilprin and Mr. Vaux, specimens of 

 clay and a limestone fossil, and Messrs. Thomas Meehan and Stewardson Brown, 

 of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the remains of plants which one by one came to 

 light at home after the specimen bags were opened and their contents studied in 

 the daylight. 



2 See Transact, of Am. Philos. Sjc, 1799, Vol. iv, p. 246. 



