46 THE FOSSIL SLOTH AT BIG BONE CAVE, TENN. [Jan. 15, 



equally fresh in appearance and referable to a young animal 

 (because of the loose epiphyses) may well be believed to constitute 

 skeletal portions of the same individual.^ 



These subsequently arrived at conclusions, however, did not con- 

 cern us when first pausing in the candle light, we placed our tools 

 and baskets upon the ground to listen to the account of Priest. Our 

 hope of finding more bones depended upon the chance that he had 

 not dug up the whole floor and that other remains, resting beyond the 

 limit of his digging, had escaped him and remained to reward our 

 search. 



Down through the manure and nitrous earth resting beneath it, 

 from nine in the morning till five in the afternoon, beginning 

 where the consistency of the deposit showed that Priest and other 

 diggers had left off, we worked in the dim candle light, until our 

 hunting had accomplished its object, and until the walls of our 

 trench revealed the facts herewith described, and first that of a se- 

 quence in time marked by the layers that had accumulated upon 

 the foothold, and of which two epoch-denoting divisions confront- 

 ed us. They consisted of (below and older) a water-deposited nitrous 

 clay, resting upon the bottom rock, standing for a time when the 

 cave was wet, and (above and later) the manure previously re- 

 ferred to, testifying to an epoch when the cave was dry, and to 

 the latter division with its subdivisions described as Layers i, 2 and 



^ Dr. Richard Harlan (see Medical and Physical Researches, hy Richard Harlan, 

 Philadelphia, 1835, p. 321) describes the set at the Academy of Natural Sciences in 

 1835, He speaks of and partially figures " two claws of the fore feet, a radius, a 

 humerus, a scapula, one rib and several remnants, an os calcis, a tibia, a portion 

 of the femur, one lumbar and four dorsal vertebrae, the portion of a molar tooth, to- 

 gether with several epiphyses, the bones of a young animal imperfectly formed at the 

 extremities." Distinctly noting the cartilage on several of the specimens, he calls par- 

 ticular attention to the nail on one claw (see Fig. 3 ). According to him , they were ob- 

 tained by Mr. Dorfeuille (proprietor of the Cincinnati Musem) from a Mr. Clifford 

 of Kentucky, bought from Dorfeuille by Mr. J. Price Wetherill, and presented by the 

 latter to the Academy of Natural Sciences. Harlan had in another paper referred 

 to these bones as coming from White cave, Kentucky, and after repeating the state- 

 ment here corrects it at the last moment with a footnote which says, *' According to 

 the recent observations of Dr. Troost, these bones were derived from the Big Rone 

 cave, Tennessee." My guides' Priest and Johnson had heard of the discovery of 

 other sloth bones at the cave in the early part of the century, and for the reasons 

 above given I have no doubt that the nitre diggers (of 1812 probably) found them at 

 the site of the other discoveries, and that Clifford obtained them through intermedi- 

 aries. Interesting details of this first discovery would probably appear in Dr. Troost's 

 communication to Dr. Harlan if it could be found. 



