244 Fossil Bones from Tennessee and Tevas. 
The capabilities of this instrument are obvious, and if the wire of 
the coil be fine and of considerable length, we are enabled to de- 
termine in a ready manner the relative powers of different orders 
of currents, and numbers of elements in the compound batteries. 
The power of the instrument may be much increased, by imsert- 
ing the branch of the soft iron which is now without the coil, in 
another similar coil, but the construction would be a little more 
complicated. The two branches of the wire frame may be so 
put together as to be easily separable, for the introduction and 
trial of coils of various dimensions and sizes of wire; in which — 
case the coils should all be made upon the same former, so as to 
present the same diameter of central opening. , 
Washington, January 16, 1546. 
at 
+ Arr. XIL—Remarks on some Fossil Bones recently brought to 
New Orleans from Tennessee and from Texas; by WiL14M 
. Carpenter, M. D., Prof. in the Med. Coll. of Louisiana. 
L. Fossils from. Tennessee—the “ gigantic Fossil Man,” (be- 
ing the skeleton of a young mastodon.) Much interest has been 
recently excited by the announcement of the discovery in Ten- 
nessee of the remains of a man eighteen feet high. The papers 
teemed with accounts of the prodigy, and public confidence 
was secured by the assertion that the distinguished physi- 
cians of the west had testified that they were human remains. 
About the last of December these remains reached this city ; and 
on the first of January I was requested by a distinguished sut- 
geon here to go with him on the invitation of the proprietor to 
examine them, and give an opinion. ‘They had been erected 10 
a high room; the skeleton was sustained in its erect position by 
alarge upright beam of timber. Ata glance it was apparent 
that it was nothing more than the skeleton of a young mastodon, 
(one of Godman’s Tetracaulodons, with sockets for four tusks. ) 
The bones of the leg and ankle were complete, the metatarsal 
bones wanting. The bones of the anterior extremities complete 
to the metacarpal bones, which were present in one leg, the pha- 
langes wanting. Most of the vertebra were: present ; the mbs 
mostly of wood. . ‘The pelvic arrangement was entirely of wood; 
the scapule were present, but somewhat broken, and. were rigged 
on with a most human-like elevation ; pieces of ribs supplying the 
