312 Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 
negroes were fit to distinguish the species of this genus at a 
petiod when no naturalist had as yet distingaichodl them. 
Mr. Barton adds, that he has himself seen some teeth of 
the European fossil elephant found, in 1795, at some “di- 
stance to the north of the place spoken of by Catesby, at a ~ 
place called Biggin-swamps, near the source of the west 
branch of Cooper river.. They were cight feet deep, mixed 
promiscuously with bones of the great mastodonta. 
The same gentleman saw a grinder of this description pro- 
cured from a branch of the river Susqueanna, with a portion 
of a tusk six feet long and 31 inches round, which would 
have been at least ten feet long if it had been entire; and, 
what is remarkable, the Déliware savages call this branch 
Chemung, or Horn river. 
“It was according to these facts that Mr. Barton wrote to 
M.‘Lacepede. ‘* The skeletons or bones of some large ani- 
mals,/more or less allied to the family of elephants, have - 
also been discovered in different parts of North America. 
Among these I recognise the grinders of a species which, 
if not the same as the elephant of Asia, must have been (as 
to the form of its grinders at least) more nearly allied to that 
species than is the mammoth*.” Mr. Barton here means 
the mastodonta. : 
I have some pieces of fossil bones from America in my 
own possession. I am indebted for them to the friendship 
with which I am honoured by M. Humboldt. During all 
his travels, he neglected no opportunity of collecting fossil 
‘carcases, with -the view of furthering my researches; and 
he sent me, upon his return, two pieces of real elephants’ 
bones, the one from North and the other from South Ame- 
rica. 
The first consists of separate lamin of grinders, and is 
consequently unequivocal. They are very large, and en- 
tirely similar to those of Siberia by the straightness and:the 
smal! degree: of festooning in the lamina of the enamel, as 
well as by the small dilatation of their middle, This spe- 
cimen came from Mexico. 
* Sce Philosophical Magazine, vol. xxii. p. 98. 
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