IN VIRGINIA. 399 



While treating of the maritime borders of Virginia, let 

 me not forget to mention the remains of a mammoth 

 found on the bank of York river, in 1811, about six miles 

 east of Williamsburgh. When discovered, they lay on a 

 marsh-mud, or a few feet within it, surrounded by roots 

 of cypress trees penetrating the earth where the bones 

 were found. Those roots were evidently the remains of 

 such as had been shot forth by trees growing in the 

 ground, now removed by water. The difference be- 

 tween the present level, where the bones and roots are, 

 and the top of the adjacent bank, is more than twenty feet. 



I received these facts from that reverend prelate, 

 bishop James Madison, then president of William and 

 Mary College. He visited the place, and examined into 

 every thing relative to the discovery, with his accustom- 

 ed accuracy. (See further particulars in Med. Reposi- 

 tory, vol. xv. p. 388, 390.) It will be there found, that 

 the parts of the skeleton raised, were the ossa innomi- 

 nata; a femur or thigh bone; two vertebrae or joints of 

 the back; two ribs almost entire; two tusks in tolerable 

 preservation ; seven teeth, all of them grinders, and four 

 of them fixed in their sockets, which seemed to be part 

 of the lower jaw. The weight of the largest tooth was 

 7 l-4ib. ; of the smaller, from 3 to 41b. 



Other Fossil Remains in the United States* 

 Rhode Island. 



Rhode Island contains a stratum of coal. It burns 

 with little or no flame, and is somewhat difficult to kin- 

 dle ; but makes an intensely hot fire. It is associated 

 frequently with quartz, and sometimes with asbestos 

 crystallized. ,It does not emit any kind of offensive 



