Academy of Science. 11 



ized state. This goes to prove that the animals whose bones we find along the 

 same horizon with the mastodon, and are not fossilized, did not live contempora- 

 neously with the mastodon whose jaw was found fossilized. We conclude then, that 

 the mastodon jaw, though not way-worn at all, was washed into this old lake-bed 

 after fossilization had taken place, and maybe all of the animal that was preserved. 



I might also add, that Mr M Sayler, during last summer, explored the banks of 

 the Wakarusa tor some ten or twelve miles by boat , his explorations only con- 

 firmed our own previously made, and added considerably to our previous collection 

 of unfossilized bones. 



This lake-bed in which the mastodon jaw was found is about twenty -five feet be- 

 low the present surface of ground. Whatever fossil treasures are in this locality 

 we can not now determine ; but so many bones have already been found that we 

 alreadyspeak of it as the Bone-bed of the Wakarusa. 



A FOSSIL TUSK, FOUND IN FRANKLIN COUNTY. 



By Prof. Wm. Wheeler, Ottawa. 



Sometime during the spring or early summer of 1878, a farmer, living on Eight- 

 Mile Creek, in Franklin county, observed a curious looking root or snag protrud- 

 ing from the bank of the creek ; and upon examining it, he concluded that it must 

 be the fossil tusk of some gigantic animal. He thereupon dug it from the bank, 

 an 1 took it to Ottawa, leaving it in the office of the Ottaica Eepubhcnn The writer 

 of this examined the fossil at the time, but not being an expert in such matters, he 

 did not give a decided opinion upon its character, but inclined to the opinion that 

 it was petrified wood. A piece of the thing was sent, by the writer, to Prof. F. H 

 Snow, of the State University, who, after careful examination, pronounces it 

 ^'fossil ivory." It is, therefore, without doubt, the tusk of a gigantic mastodon. 



In taking the tusk from the gravelly bank in which it was buried, two or three 

 feet of the larger end was broken off, and the smaller end, for perhaps three feet, 

 was not procured. The part saved measured fifty inches in length, and six inches 

 in diameter at the larger end, three and a half inches at the smaller end. The 

 whole tusk must, therefore, have been ten or twelve feet long. 



The accompanying diagram represents the appearance of the ends when sawed 

 square off. The appearance is very much that of the end of a small log or root, 

 with some of the lines of growth obliterated. At these apparent lines of growth 

 the fossil splits into layers, varying in thickness from a quarter of an inch to an 

 inch. These layers break into short pieces, which easily crumble into irregular 

 fragments. The appearance of the substance of the fossil is very much like that 

 of a bone that has been boiled in lye, in the process of soap making ; and the con 

 sistency is very much that of soft soap-stone. Between the layers there is a thin 

 film of rust color, seemingly produced by oxyd of iron. 



A few years ago the tooth of a mastodon was found near the mouth of the same 

 creek, five or six miles below where this tusk was found. The rest of the skeleton 

 is probably somewhere along the bed or banks of the creek. 



