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Botany and Zoology. - 133 
11, Remains of the Mammoth and Mastodon in California; by W.P. 
Braxe.—A large tooth of the Elephas primigenius was found about,a 
year since on the shores of the Bay of San Pedro (the sea-port of Los An- 
gelos) California.* It was washed out of a bank by the undermining 
Bay, in the direction of Los Angelos. 
During my recent visit to the mining region of the State, I ascer- 
tained that teeth of both the Elephas primigenius and the Mastodon, 
had been exhumed at several places from the auriferous flats. 
In Calaveras county, at the mining town called Murphy’s, several 
teeth of the Mastodon have been taken out froma depth of about thirty 
feet below the surface. They were imbedded in blue clay, and asso- 
ciated with auriferous gravel and fragments of talcose slates. Two of 
= — have been preserved, and I was permitted to make drawings 
or them. 
I conversed with a miner at this town, who had found what he sup-. 
posed was a number of teeth connected together. His partners being 
anxious to have a specimen to send home, the mass was “split up” and 
a tooth given to each owner in the claim. This specimen was un- 
doubtedly a tooth of the Mammoth, and the plates were mistaken for 
Single teeth. 
A large tusk was taken out of Texas flat about two years ago. It 
was allowed to remain exposed to the weather outside of a miner’s 
e 
Specimens share a similar fate; or they are hoarde 
who fancy they have an extraordinary value, and who will hardly part 
with them at any price. 
12. Discovery of Viviparous Fish in Louisiana; by B. Downer, 
he N. O. Med. and Surg. Journal.)—In the month of Octo- 
r, 1854, through the politeness of J. C. B. Harvey, M.D., of Tchoupi- 
toulas street, I received a small osseous fish, caught in the New Orleans 
nal, which connects the city with Lake Pontchartrain. This fish 
had been placed in a basket containing crabs, one of which wounded it 
slightly in the abdomen near the cloaca, thereby exposing several foetal 
fish enveloped in a delicate membrance. The parent fish, which had 
been rudely thrust into a narrow-mouthed phial of spirits, retains after 
immersion for two weeks, the original rigor mortis, and the same re- 
mark applies’ to the fcetuses, though they have been soaked in water: 
Some of them have been forcibly straightened. On the 17th of Octo- 
ber, in the presence of, and assisted by Dr.’s J. Hale and M. M. Dower, 
T enlarged the wound and proceeded to dissect a somewhat globular 
mass of fcetuses bounded by the intestines before, and separated from 
* The specimen was found by a brother of Capt. Ord, U.S. A, from whom I pro- 
cured the specimen for description. 
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