382 I'ROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.49. 



from fresh-water beds of late Tertiary or Quaternary age. None of 

 these materials threw ajiy additional light on the nature of the ani- 

 mal which was going under the name of Desmostylus. 



Yoshiwara and Iwasaki, in the paper cited, described a part of a 

 skull of an animal whose relationships were not definitely determined 

 by them and to which they gave no generic or specific name. How- 

 ever, they concluded that the animal was a proboscidean, but they 

 also recognized its sirenian relationships. The specimen presented 

 the front end of the skull from the snout to the rear of the upper 

 maxillae and the lower j aw from the front to a point below the orbit. 

 The length of the specimen was 550 mm., about 21.6 inches. It pre- 

 sented a number of teeth; and these, in the paper pubhshed, were 

 beautifully figured. On the publication of this paper both Osborn 

 and Merriam recognized that the animal belonged to Marsh's genus 

 Desmostylus; and this recognition led to the communication made 

 by Osborn to Science in which Merriam's note is contained. 



In 1906 Merriam ^ published a paper on the subject, in which he 

 noted two additional finds of teeth of Desmostylus. One specimen 

 had been obtained at La Panza, San Luis Obispo County, Cahfornia; 

 the second lot, near Santa Ana, Orange County, in the same State. 

 Both lots occurred in marine shales of Miocene age. Thus the animal 

 had been found in three cases in marine deposits of Miocene times, 

 once at Yaquina Bay, Oregon, and in two places in the southern half 

 of California. This sufficed to prove that there was some error in 

 Marsh's statement that the Desmostylus teeth had been found asso- 

 ciated with extinct horses, camels, and edentates. The error may 

 have arisen on the part of the collector of Marsh's materials. 



In 1911 Merriam pubhshed additional notes on Desmostylus.^ In 

 this paper he showed that Marsh's type had not been found in Ala- 

 meda County, but in Contra Costa. Merriam regards the genus as 

 belonging to the lower Miocene. 



In April of the present year I received from Mrs. EUen Condon 

 McCornack, of Eugene, Oregon, a letter in which she informed me 

 that Mr. J. G. Crawford, of Albany, Oregon, had in his possession a 

 skull which she believed to belong to some sirenian. Mi-s. McCor- 

 nack enclosed photographs of this specimen and likewise a sketch 

 of a tooth which is in the University of Oregon. This is quite cer- 

 tainly the tooth which is mentioned by Merriam as having been in 

 the possession of Professor Condon. Mrs. McCornack is the daugh- 

 ter of Professor Condon and takes great interest in the subjects which 

 occupied the attention of her father. 



As a result of negotiations with Mr. Crawford the skull, together 

 with a tooth of probably another individual and two cetacean ver- 



' i^cieuce, vol. 2^, pp. 151-152. ^ Bull. Dept. Geol. Univ. Calif., vol. 6, pp. 403-412, figs. 1-11. 



