132 



and subsequently elevated to the position in which we now see 

 them. 



The presence at Big Bone Lick, on the Ohio, in Kentucky, of 

 great quantities of bones of buffaloes near the spot where salt sources 

 issue through marshy lands, and the existence of the beaten tracks 

 by which these animals approached this spot, render it highly pro- 

 bable that they were allured thither during certain seasons in extra- 

 ordinary numbers, and that many of them were engulfed and de- 

 stroyed in the marshy ground. 



Mr. Lyell endeavovirs to show that what occurred Avithin the 

 historic sera to the buiFalo, in all jorobability occurred also to the 

 extinct mammals, Avhose bones are found in the subjacent clay 

 and marsh to a depth of twenty-five feet, and are associated with 

 modern fluviatile, terrestrial and lacustrine shells, showing that floods 

 of the Ohio have drifted and re-arranged buffalo bones at higher 

 levels than the comparatively ancient marsh. Mr. Lyell suggests, 

 that no great physical revolution of the surface has taken place 

 since the Mastodons died and were buried on the spot, and at a period 

 not very remote from that in which we live. All these remains of ex- 

 tinct quadrupeds, including a horse, which from the incurvated for-m 

 of its teeth Professor Owen believes to have been of a different spe- 

 cies from that which is now living, are said to have existed, as far 

 as the author can judge, all over North America*, at a later period 

 than the deposit of the great boulder drift when the continent was 

 submerged beneath the sea which contained shells of modern species. 

 In connexion with this subject, allusion is made to the observations 

 in South America, of Sir W. Parish and Mr, Darwin ; who found 

 that the great Megatherioid quadrupeds lived at a very modern 

 geological period. 



The same conclusion respecting the relative age of these fossil 

 quadrupeds and the recent molluscous fauna, is fully substantiated 

 by a clear section andan interesting memoir by Mr. Hamilton Couper 

 of Georgia, recently read before this Society. This author acquaints 

 us, that a shelly post-pliocene deposit, Avhich extends far along the 

 coast, and embraces exclusively marine shells of existing species, 

 is covered by a swampy accumulation, in which the tusks of mam- 

 moth and mastodon, often in excellent condition and little abraded, 

 are grouped with the remains of the megatherium, horse, &c. 

 All this indicates a very tranquil deposit, a slow and gi-adual 

 emersion of the bottom of the sea, and a long-continued elevation of 

 the land during the period of those great mammals which have since 

 passed away and given place to man and the present races. 



In bringing before us such a number of clear proofs of successive 

 oscillations of the continent of America, drawn from his own ob- 

 servations and those of other authors, and in generalizing on them 

 with his usual skill, Mr. Lyell further deduces a very important 

 corollary from the Arctic character of the shells in the most recent 



* Has any comparison been yet made between the teeth of the American 

 and the European fossil horses i 



