DIVISION OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY — GILMORE 311 



Museum, but in a catalog of the National Institute the following 

 vertebrate specimens were listed as being exhibited in case 18 : 



Vertebrae of fossil Cetacea. 



4 specimens of fossil fish from near Astoria, Oreg. (fossil fisli well worthy of the 



attention of the curious). 

 Mastodon tooth. 

 Fossil skull and fishes. 

 Bronze bust of Cuvier. 



Mastodon tooth from Marianna, Fla. Walter Younge, N. C. 

 Large ox horn from Missouri. 

 Fossil remains of the Arctic or North American elephant or mastodon found 



in the State of Missouri, 1843. 

 Numerous tusks (10 to 12 feet long), good preservation. 

 100 teeth, many of them, weight being 20 to 30 pounds. 



In addition to the specimens listed above Leidy ^ enumerated the 

 bones of a Megatherium from Skidaway Island, Ga., which he exam- 

 ined in the National Institute collections.' They are as follows : Lower 

 jaw (nearly complete) with teeth; isolated tooth; temporal portion 

 of cranium ; annular metacarpal bone ; axis ; cervical vertebra ; 2 dorsal 

 centra; spinous process of dorsal vertebra; 2 rib fragments; head of 

 femur; proximal extremities of two tibia; os calcis and several tooth 

 fragments. 



It is assumed that all these specimens w^ere transferred to the 

 Smithsonian Institution in 1858, at the time the bulk of the other 

 collections of the National Institute was received. These materials 

 were incorporated in the private collections of the Institution in ac- 

 cordance with the terms of its charter, thus becoming the property 

 of the Government. Now, however, only a few of the specimens can 

 be recognized, and in all probability many of them have long since 

 been discarded because of the lack of data as to their origin, locality, 

 and geological occurrence. 



One of the important specimens of this collection, which only 

 recently reached the Smithsonian Institution, was the type of Delfhinus 

 calvertensis, for 90 years in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 

 Cambridge, Mass. Its history is as follows : In October or November 

 1841, Francis Markoe, Jr., corresponding secretary of the National 

 Institute, made a geological excursion in Calvert and St. Marys 

 Counties in Maryland. From a cliff in the vicinity of Cove Point, 

 with the help of Dr. Tongue, a cetacean skull was collected. In 1842 

 this specimen was described by Richard Harlan,^ who named it Del- 



• Smithsonian Contr. Knowl., vol. 7, p. 51, IS.jo. 



■^ Tinder date of April 2, 1851, a letter from Professor Baird to John Varden, curator of 

 the National Institute, made a request for the Megatherium bones in case 18, presumably 

 for Dr. I^idy. 



8 Description of a new extinct species of dolphin from Maryland. Proc. Nat. Inst., vol. 2, 

 pp. 195-196, figs. 1-4, 1842. 



