Discovery of a Skeleton of the Zygodon. 411 



broken series from the head to the extreme tail, and appeared to occupy 

 the place upon which the animal died. The bones are more or less fos- 

 silized, having lost nearly all the animal matter, and been penetrated by 

 carbonate of lime. Yet a large portion of their surface retains the 

 smooth and ordinary appearance of bone. The enamel of the teeth is 

 also retained. Numerous sharks' teeth and shells are scattered over 

 the surface, or imbedded in the soil. The most common of the shells 

 are several species of the genera Ostrea, Exogyra, Pecten, Echinus, 

 Conus, and Scutella. The rocks of the immediate vicinity are lime- 

 stone, which is sometimes as white and nearly as soft as chalk, but des- 

 titute of flints or organic remains. This variety is often sawed into 

 blocks and used for building chimneys. The rock partly surrounding 

 the field in which our bones were discovered, is a white limestone filled 

 with nummulites. The gray limestone, with more or less organic re- 

 mains, is the prevailing rock of the immediate neighborhood. These 

 limestones often present an almost perpendicular escarpment of rock, 

 sometimes in the form of little islands, against which the waves of the 

 olden time appear to have dashed. The spot seems once to have been 

 an estuary or arm of the sea, interspersed with small islands, and here 

 the Zygodon appears to have lived. Bordering the limestone within a 

 mile of this place, is a red sandstone apparently destitute of organic 

 remains. This forms the most elevated part of the country, and ex- 

 tends over a large portion of Clark County, affording a poor soil, of 

 which the prevailing timber is the long-leafed pine (Pinus palustris) 

 associated with dwarf oaks. This sandstone often affords hollow cyl- 

 inders several inches in diameter and from one to three feet long, the 

 cavities of which frequently contain a red ochre, (oxide of iron,) some- 

 times used by children as a pigment. 



Bones of the Zygodon have been seen in Washington County, Mis- 

 sissippi, and from thence they have been found in several places as far 

 east as Claiborne, on the Alabama River. Judge Creagh relates, that 

 when he first moved to Clark County, about twenty years ago, these 

 bones, consisting mostly of large vertebrae, were so numerous as seri- 

 ously to interfere with the tillage of some of his fields, and hence they 

 burned large quantities of them in the fires of their log heaps. At this 

 time scattered vertebras, generally much broken and wanting processes, 

 are lying on the surface of the ground in almost every field of Judge 

 Creagh's and the neighboring plantations. Among these no head or 

 part of one is known to have ever been seen, except those parts which 

 Dr. Harlan described, and these in our possession. The reason of this 

 is, that the jaws were hollow and composed of a thin plate or plates of 

 bone filled with animal matter ; and when this matter contained in the 

 cavities was destroyed, the exterior plates were easily broken. It may 



