130 



and in this opinion concurred Drs. Hayes and Harlan, of Phila- 

 delphia. The President said that, being in Baltimore, he sought 

 for this tooth and ascertained it had disappeared some time 

 before, in a manner wholly unknown. Some time after, being in 

 the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, 

 looking over a fine collection of Mastodon teeth, in company 

 with Dr. Hayes, this gentleman discovered a tooth which had all 

 the characters of the lost Baltimore specimen. Dr. Wilson, who 

 had given it to the Academy, on being inquired of, said that it 

 was purchased by his brother in London, as a supposed Ameri- 

 can fossil. On examination, it appeared to have none of the 

 characters of the tooth of the American Mastodon giganteiis, but 

 evidently belonged to the narrow-toothed group, either angusti- 

 dens, longirostris, or Humboldtius. Furthermore', whatever was 

 its species, it was a Miocene fossil, and of course was derived 

 from a deposit that had never presented any relic of M. gigan- 

 teus, in this country. Being an insulated fossil, since none be- 

 longing to the same species or group had ever been seen among 

 thousands of Mastodon specimens met with in North America, it 

 was of course an object of great interest, and he had been led to 

 investigate its history with all possible exactness. All the evi- 

 dence he could obtain concurred in supporting the opinion that 

 it was the tooth actually possessed -by Dr. Ducatel, and which 

 was brought to light in the manner he had described. On a 

 recent visit to Europe, the President said, he had taken with 

 him a cast of the tooth, colored, under the direction of Dr. Wil- 

 son, exactly as when discovered, and exhibited it to Sir Charles 

 Lyell and Mr. Charlesworth, who were fortunately in London. 

 Both of these gentlemen distinctly recognized it as the tooth ihey 

 had formerly seen in America. On exhibiting it to Professor 

 Owen, he thought the fact of its being an insulated fossil ought 

 not to be considered an objection to its being a native of Ame- 

 rica, since every newly discovered species would be liable to the 

 same difficulty. He considered it as decidedly belonging to the 

 narrow-toothed group, and thought it probable that other por- 

 tions of a skeleton might hereafter be found in the Southern 

 parts of the United States. The President said he had taken 

 every opportunity to call the attention of Palaeontologists in this 

 country and in Europe to this specimen, in the hope of obtaining 



