Fossil Bones from Oregon Territory. 



137 



hope and with the desire, if they are not what I have supposed 

 them to be, that some one better acquainted with the subject may- 

 aid in determining the animals to v/hich they once belonged. 



The remains were found by Mr. Ewing Young, in December, 

 1839, on the Walhammet or Multnomah river, a tributary of the 

 Columbia, in latitude 44° N. " They were," to use his own 

 words, "about twelve feet under the earth." Among them I 

 find a part of the tusk, an upper second, and a lower third molar 

 of the fossil elephant, one of the tarsal bones of the fossil ox, 

 which I should judge, comparing this bone with the correspond- 

 ing one of an ox weighing over eight hundred pounds, could not 

 have weighed less than fourteen or sixteen hundred pounds, be- 

 sides several fragments of the shafts of bones, which I am una- 

 ble at present to determine. But the greatest interest attaches 

 to the tooth and large fragments which I am now about to de- 

 scribe. 



Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 



The tooth to which I refer, as you will see by Fig. 1, is pris- 

 matic, fluted, and quadrangular. Its length is two inches and 

 nine tenths, its breadth at the widest part, from a to 6, six eighths 

 of an inch ; the outside of the tooth resembles fine ivory. With- 

 in this is the bony or coarse ivory. Upon looking at the crown 



Vol. xi.ii, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1841. 18 



