176 FOSSIL MAMMALS. 



REMAINS OF TERRESTRIAL MAMMALIA IN ALLUVIUM. 



The most important mammalian fossil of this kind is the elephant from Mt. Holly. 

 We give Professor Thompson's description of it : 



" Elephas primogenius, Blumenbach. "It is a remarkable fact, that in making the Rut- 

 land and Burlington Railroad, which extends from Burlington to Bellows Falls, two of 

 the most interesting fossils ever found in New England were brought to light. These 

 were the remains of an elephant and a whale. The former were found in Mt. Holly, in 

 1848, and the latter in Charlotte, in 1849. 



" The Rutland and Burlington Railroad crosses the Green Mountains in the township 

 of Mt. Holly, at an elevation of 1415 feet above the level of the ocean, and the bones of 

 the fossil elephant were found at that height. It is in a peat bed east of the summit sta- 

 tion that these bones are found. The basin in which the peat is situated appears to have 

 been originally filled with water, and to have been a favorite resort for beaver, a large 

 proportion of the materials which formed the lower part of the peat consisting of billets 

 of wood, about eighteen inches long, which had been cut off at both ends, drawn into the 

 water and divested of the bark by the beaver, for food. The peat was fifteen feet deep 

 before the excavation was made for the railroad. 



"In making this excavation, the workmen found at the bottom of the bed, resting upon 

 gravel which separated it from the rock below, a huge tooth. The depth of the peat at 

 that place was eleven feet. Soon afterwards one of the tusks was found, about eighty feet 

 from the place of the tooth above mentioned, which was a grinder. Subsequently the 

 other tusk and several of the bones of the animal were found near the same place. These 

 bones and teeth were submitted to the inspection of Professor Agassiz, who pronounced 

 them to be an extinct species of elephant. The directors of the R. & B. R. R., to whom 

 they belong, design to have them placed in the museum of the University of Vermont, 

 for preservation, and for the illustration of our fossil geology. 



" The grinder is in an excellent state of preservation, and weighed eight pounds, and 

 the length of its grinding surface is about eight inches. The tusks are somewhat decayed, 

 and one of them badly broken. The cord, drawn in a straight line from the base to the 

 point of the most perfect tusk, measures sixty inches, and the longest perpendicular, let 

 fall from that to the inner curve of the tusk, measures nineteen inches. The length of 

 the tusk, measured along the curve on the outer surface, is eighty inches, and its greatest 

 circumference twelve inches. The circumference has diminished very much, since the 

 tusk was taken from the peat bed, on account of shrinkage in drying, and several longi- 

 tudinal cracks have been found in it, extending through its whole length, and it was 

 found necessary to wind it with wire to prevent it from splitting to pieces." 



In 1858 remains of another elephant were found in Richmond, which are now in the 

 Cabinet of Vermont University. 



The fossil ham of some ruminant has been found in Hartford ; and the ham of a deer 

 in the alluvium of Grand Isle; the latter specimen is in the Cabinet of Vermont 

 University. 



Other fossils are found in a cave at Chittenden, the bones of small animals, such as 

 are now alive. 



