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Key West, Feb. 25th, 1858. 

 Professor F. S. Holmes : 



My Dear Sir: — I have not forgotten my promise to write you 

 my impressions respecting' your important discoveries of fossil 

 mammalia in the post-pieiocene beds of South-Carolina. Indeed 

 I have been thinking - of them continually since I saw them, and 

 nothing impressed me so deeply for many years past as the 

 sight of these bones. I consider their careful study in all their 

 relations as of the utmost importance for the progress of our 

 science. It is true there is hardly any thing of interest in the 

 animals themselves, since they appear to be all well known 

 types, but their simultaneous occurrence in the same beds, show- 

 ing that they have lived together at a time when the white man 

 had not yet planted himself upon this continent, render their 

 association as undisputed. How does it happen, that horses, 

 sheep, bulls and hogs, not distinguishable from our domestic 

 species existed upon this continent, together with the deer, the 

 musk-rat, the beaver, the hare, the opossom, the tapir, which in 

 our days are peculiar to this continent, and not found in the 

 countries where our domesticated animals originated ? The 

 whole matter might seem to admit of an easy solution by sup- 

 posing that the native American horse, sheep, bull, and hog were 

 different species from those of the old world, even though the 

 parts preserved show no specific differences; but this would be a 

 mere theoretical solution of a difficulty which seems to me to 

 have far deeper meaning, and to bear directly upon the question 

 of the first origin of organized beings. 



The circumstances under which these remains are found, ad- 

 mit of no doubt but the animals from which they are derived, 

 existed in North America long before this continent was settled 

 by the white race of men, together with animals which to this 

 day are common in the same localities, such as the deer, the 

 musk-rat, the opossum and others only now found in South Ame- 

 rica, such as the tapir. Tin's shows beyond the possibility of. a 

 controversy, that animals which cannot be distinguished from 

 one another, may originate independently in different fauna, and 

 I take it that the facts you have brought together, are a satis- 

 factory proof that horses, sheep, bulls and hogs not distinguish- 

 able at present from the domesticated species, were called into 

 exisience upon the continent of North America prior to the com- 

 ing of the white race to these parts, and that they had already 

 disappeared here when the new comers set foot upon this con- 

 tinent; but the presence of tapir teeth among the rest show also 

 that a genus peculiar to South America and the Sunda Islands 

 existed also in North America in those days, and that its repre- 

 sentative of that period is not distinguishable from the South 

 American species. 



It would be desirable in this stage of the enquiry to compare 

 your tapir teeth with those of the species from Central America, 



