THE AMERICAN BISONS. 89 
Maine. The late Mrs. Frederic Allen, of Gardiner, secured these teeth for 
her cabinet, where they were seen by Sir Charles Lyell, who took with him 
some of them to England for determination. Respecting these specimens, 
and others contained in Mrs. Allen’s cabinet, Sir Charles speaks as follows: 
“At Mrs. Allen’s I examined, with much interest, a collection of fossil shells 
-and crustacea, made by Mrs. Allen, from the drift, or ‘ glacial’ deposits of 
the same age as those of Portsmouth, already described. Among other 
remains I recognized the tooth of a walrus, similar to one procured by me in 
Martha’s Vineyard, and other teeth, since determined by Professor Owen as 
belonging to the buffalo, or American bison. These are, I believe, the first 
examples of land quadrupeds discovered in beds of this age in the United 
States. The accompanying shells consisted of the common mussel (Mytilus 
edulis), Saaicava rugosa, Mya arenaria, Pecten islandicus, and species of the 
genera Astarte, Nucula, etc.” * 
These specimens of supposed bison’s teeth having assumed a considerable 
degree of importance, I wrote, in January, 1873, to Professor Owen, to ob- 
tain, if possible, further information respecting them. In his reply, dated 
Cairo, Egypt, February 6, 1873, he says: “I do not recall the circumstance 
to which you refer, and no teeth of ruminants from the locality you name 
were in the Paleontological Department of the British Museum when the 
state of my health obliged me to winter here. I should be unwilling to 
accept the responsibility of any determination which I have not myself pub- 
lished, after the care requisite for such a step.” 
Upon the death of Mrs. Frederic Allen, her collection passed into the 
possession of her daughter, Mrs. Romeo Elton, now residing in Dorchester, 
Mass. Through Mrs. Elton’s kindness I have been able to obtain the full 
history of the specimens in question, and to examine the three teeth still 
remaining in her collection, and which were figured by Dr. A. 8. Packard, Jr., 
in his memoir on the Glacial Phenomena of Labrador and Maine, etc.t 
There is also a specimen from the original lot of four, in the Museum of the 
Boston Society of Natural History, presented to the Society by Dr. C. T. 
Jackson, with a collection of Maine tertiary fossils. 
The circumstances of the finding of the teeth are fully set forth in a writ- 
ten statement, or deposition, made at the time by the person who collected 
the specimens. Through the kindness of Mrs. Elton, | have before me the 
* Second Visit to the United States of North America, Vol. I, pp. 43, 44, 1849. 
+ Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. I, plate vii, fig. 18. 
