FOSSILS OF THE GRAVEL SERIES: THE ELEPHANT. 255 
of the tail was found. By actual measurement, the length of the vertebral 
column was twenty feet. The great bones and joints of the fore and hind 
legs lay on either side of the column in their appropriate places, but in dis- 
orderly array. The skull rested apparently upon its face, the lower jaw upper- 
most; it was about four feet in length and two in width. From the upper 
jaw sprang two massive, curved, black tusks, diverging as they lay, until the 
tips were four or five feet asunder. Their size and beauty induced Mr. 
Bailey [the miner by whom the skeletons were discovered] to spend two 
days of labor in the attempt to disengage the right-hand one for preser- 
vation. With great care and patience he removed the cement and soil from 
above and around it, until it rested only on a thin narrow ridge of clay cury- 
ing from base to point; but, on applying a slight degree of force, it crumbled 
at once to fragments. Its diameter at the base was six inches, and it retained 
this size with great uniformity for four feet; thence it tapered to the point, 
two feet two inches farther, making its entire length six feet two inches. Its 
surface was hard, smooth, black enamel. This color penetrated one fourth 
of an inch in depth. It does not appear to have been colored by any ingre- 
dient in the soil. The mass of the interior was white. All the bones crum- 
bled rapidly on exposure.” 
A mile below the locality where the above-mentioned elephant was found, 
a large quantity of bones were discovered by Mr. Bailey in the course of his 
mining operations. The “cement” — clay and sand — was there twenty-two 
feet thick, and the remains were mostly found in a stratum about two feet 
above the granite bed-rock. Here, as Mr. Winchell remarks, hundreds of 
decaying bones, as large as those of the elephant, were found lying together 
in great confusion, with some bones of smaller animals among them.* 
The most important point regarding the occurrence of the fossil remains 
of the elephant in the mining region of the Sierra is, that they have not thus 
as those of the mas- 
far been found as low down — geologically speaking 
todon. No instance has as yet reached the writer’s notice of their occurrence 
under the basaltic capping of the gravel. And, in general, the appearance 
of the various specimens seen in the possession of the miners, or collected 
together in museums and saloons,} was never that of partial fossilization, such 
* It is much to be regretted that it was impossible for any member of the Geological Survey to visit 
this locality at the time these explorations were going on. 
t “Saloons,” i. e., places where whiskey is dispensed, are excellent places to see what of interest in the 
way of fossils has been found in their respective neighborhoods. A large portion of the most interesting 
specimens used to find their way to saloons, where they were carefully preserved and highly valued. 
