90 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



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 

 locality, and its present condition, I have the following additional informa- 

 tion 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 

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

 was being dug away to supply a brickyard." t Referring to a suspicion I had 

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

 domestic ox, lie adds further : '-The teeth in question may have fallen over 

 the embankment, and got mixed up in the beds. 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." One of the teeth remain- 

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

 in its original matrix of blue clay, of the same character as that enclosing 

 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 

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

 bad 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 



lb'- assumption of their being the teeth of the domestic ..\ My first coni- 



• The following >- ;i literal transcription of the document : "The teeth thai I dog out of theclaj bank 

 about fifteen feel below the surface ; was ;i solid bank of blue clay, so firm thai it was impossible for any- 

 thing t" have ■_'"! in there, thi or fissures thai it could have fallen into ;i- it »■<» par- 

 i I ; there were four 1 \ i n •_: vcrj nearl) together in the '"lid claj anil required such exertion to '_''•' 

 tlirin mil thai they could nol .it such a depth have ^<>t in bj ordinarj means. 



■ :<.i Soi ii "i Avon, t - 



t kfrs Elton inform thai now the original bank has been whollj removi 'I 



