fl 



90 



THE AMEEICAF BISO^^S. 



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original document^ which represents the teeth as occurring in a solid clay 

 bank;, fifteen feet below the surface.* In respect to the character of the 

 localitjy and its present condition, I haye the following additional informa- 

 from Dr. A. S. Packard^ Jr.^ in answer to special inquiries on this point. 

 In a letter dated Salem, Mass., December 31, 1872, Dr. Packard writes: ^^In 

 answer to your other query, I have examined hastily the locality, but many 

 years after Lyell visited this country, — ■ about twenty,-— and great changes 



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may have occurred in the locality, as when I was there the high clay-bank 

 was being dug away to supply a brickyard." f EefeiTing to a suspicion I had 

 communicated to him that they would probably prove to be the teeth of a 

 domestic ox, he adds further: "The teeth in question may have fallen over 

 the embankment, and got mixed up in the be9s. The beds containing the 

 shells lie below, in a vertical section, where the beds containing the sup- 

 posed bison's teeth would have been, but the shell-bearing beds graduate 



into those situated fifteen feet below the surface. 



) J 



One of the teeth remain- 



mg 



in Mrs. Elton's collection was, at the time I saw it, still firmly imbedded 



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matrix of blue clay, of the same character as that enclosing 



in its origi 



the shells. 



From the above it appears that the teeth were not taken from the clay- 

 beds by Sir Charles Lyell, as some have supposed, nor by either a geologist 

 or a scientific collector ; that they could not have been associated with the 

 fossil shells, but came from beds considerably above them ; and that it is not 

 at all improbable that they rolled down from the surface, and became firmly 

 imbedded in the clay. Furthermore, the teeth are in a remarkably perfect 

 state of preservation, looking as fresh and recent as a tooth would which 

 had had but a short period of exposure to atmospheric or any other de- 

 composing influences^ having undergone, indeed, scarcely any perceptible 

 change. 



In the structural character of the teeth themselves there is nothing that 

 positively settles the question of their identity, though the evidence favors 

 the assumption of their being the teeth of the domestic ox. My first com- 



* The following is a literal transcription of the document : " The teeth that I dug out of the clay-bank 

 about fifteen feet below the surface ; was a solid bank of blue clay, so firm that it was impossible for any- 



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thino- to have f ot in there, there were no cracks or fissures that it could have fallen into as it was per- 



fectly solid ; there were four lying very nearly together in the solid clay and re(pired such exertion to get 

 them out that they could not at such a depth have got in by ordinary means. 



" George Soule of Avon. 1837. 



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■f Mrs. Elton informs me that now the original bank has been wholly removed. 



