77 [Winslow. 



of teeth. The bones and teeth are mostly In excellent preservation, 

 and their future examination by comparative anatomists may add 

 important data for our study of the former life and the geological 

 changes which have taken place in the heart of the Andes. 



About two hundred feet above the place where we excavated the 

 bones, the ravine became so narrow that it was not more than six feet 

 wide, and its sides were perpendicular, the stream filling the whole 

 width so as to render a further penetration into the chasm impossible 

 Some days after this record I became acquainted in Quito with Mr. 

 Ignacio Lezarzaleuru, who informed me that he was one of President 

 Garcia Moreno's party who some years previously took out of the cliff 

 the skeleton of the mastodon, fragments of which were presented to 

 me by Vincente Espinosa, LL.D., and governor of the Province of 

 Riobamba, and which I have presented to this Society ; and Mr. 

 Lezarzaleuru farther stated that he explored the upper parts of 

 these cliflTs very thoroughly, and observed the bones throughout the 

 entire thickness of the silt, which he judged to be six hundred feet 

 thick, and thought them more numerous in the upper portion than in 

 the lower. 



The silt in which these bones are found is not stratified nor lamin- 

 ated in any place exposed to view, but is a solid mass of immense 

 thickness, and the bones lie in all directions, and at all angles and 

 inclinations. The silt is very compact, and it required as much work to 

 separate the bones from the material in which they were impacted 

 as if it had been sandstone. 



June 1. Having to-day been introduced to Governor Espinosa, my 

 attention became engaged while in his study with the fragments of 

 gigantic bones which he had taken from the ravine of Tungshi several 

 years since. They came from the same spot which I visited yesterday. 

 He informed me that the skeleton of the animal appeared to be com- 

 plete and that the bones protruded from the cliff about twenty feet 

 from the bottom of the ravine. The bones had been given away and 

 lost ; and he presented me with the last in his possession. The femur 

 (probably of a mastodon,) the lower fragment of which I present to the 

 Society, had been broken in two pieces. 



The length of the larger fragment was just eight and one quarter 

 inches, and its largest diameter was seven and three-eighths inches, its 

 short diameter about four inches. 



» 



Dr. A. A. Gould said that there had been, and still was, 



great diversity among conchologists in the application of 



terms in the description of shells, especially in regard to those 



of dimension, they being often used in directly opposite 



