254 



THE AUBIFEBOUS GEAVELS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 















further remarks on this point may be deferred until the next section of 



this chapter. 



Passing next to the elephant, it may be said, in general, that its remains, 



like those of the mastodon, are widely distributed over the State, occurring 



both in the Sierra and in the Coast Ranges, In point of relative abundance, 



the mastodon seems, however, to have the advantage. A number of sped- 



i 



mens collected by the Geological Survey, were submitted to Dr. Leidy for 

 examination. Among them was an upper last molar tooth of the right side, 

 obtained at Murphy's, in Calaveras County, at a depth of about thirty feet in 

 the auriferous detritus overlying the limestone. Several other fragments of 

 teeth were also obtained, all from a moderate depth in the gravel. Of these 

 specimens Dr. Leidy remarks in his notes : " All the elephant remains from 

 California, consisting of molar teeth and fragments, belong to the coarse- 

 plated variety, referred by Falconer to a species with the name of E. Columbi. 

 While I do not deny the probability of the latter being distinct from E. Ameri- 

 can®, a number of teeth in the Museum of the Academy exhibiting transition 

 forms lead me to view it only as a variety." 



The finest specimen of the fossil elephant ever discovered in California 

 so far as the writer has learned — was one found near the Fresno Eiver, the 

 locality of which was visited and carefully examined by Dr. E. C. Winchcll, 

 of Millerton, in 1866, who kindly furnished the writer with full notes of his 

 observations. According to this gentleman, the elephant was found reposing 

 on the top of a bed of hard « cement," consisting of sand and yellow clay, 

 eight or ten feet above the solid granite ledge, or bed-rock. The locality is 

 on the south bank of the Fresno, about a hundred yards from its present 

 channel, and three miles above the crossing of the stage road from Ilornitos 

 to Visalia, and twenty northwest of Millerton, the county-scat of Fresno. 

 The remains were covered by only three or four feet of sandy alluvium, min- 

 gled with disintegrated granite washed from the adjacent hillsides. 



As this locality is of importance, as being one of the very few instances in 

 which such remains have been found in the position in which they were left 

 by the death of the animal, and as indicating also its recent geological age, 

 Mr. Winchell's careful description of its appearance, as it lay exposed in the 

 excavation, will be given in his own words, as follows : 



" The vertebrae lay, without disarrangement, in their natural position, rela- 

 tively, in almost a straight line from the tail to the skull, each separated from 

 its fellow by a space of an inch to an inch and a half. The first joint only 





