14 
Hitchcock, and the Government of the Royal College 
thereon voted to present to President Hitchcock and 
Amherst College casts of the skeleton of the famous 
Megatherium of South America. These casts were 
packed, and sent to be embarked in a ship destined for 
Boston, but were unluckily delivered to a wrong ship- 
ping house in London, and I lost sight of them for 
some time. They were at length discovered. After 
remaining in this situation for more than a year, they 
were sold at public auction; and, notwithstanding 
many efforts on my part, I was unable to obtain and 
transmit them to Amherst College. 
The fossil impressions which have been distinguished 
in various places in the new red sandstone are those of © 
birds, frogs, turtles, lizards, fishes, mollusca, crustacea, 
worms, and zoophytes. Besides these, the impres- 
sions made by rain-drops, ripple-marks in the sand, 
coprolites or indurated remains of feeces of animals, 
and even impressions of vegetables, have been pre- 
served and transmitted from a remote antiquity. No 
authentic human impressions have yet been estab- 
lished; and none of the mammalia, except the 
marsupials. (?) We must, however, remember that, 
although the early paleontology contains no record of 
birds, the ancient existence of these animals is now 
fully ascertained. Remains of birds were discovered 
