166 MASTODON REMAIN'S IN NOVA SUOTIA.— PIERS. 



to the eastern bank of the Middle viver, and 1^ miles soiitii 

 15° east (true bearings) of the junction of Leonard McLeod 

 brook (Middle Eiver ) ^vith the ^Middle river. Compare 

 Geological Survey of Canada, Xova Scotia map sheet no. 13. 

 (Vide information supplied by Duncan McRae, nephew of the 

 original finder). 



The oldest mention of the bone in a Mechanics' Institute 

 inventory of about 1S35, merely gives the locality as ^'the Island 

 CajDe Breton.'" The earliest label, in Dr. Honeyman's writ- 

 ing, of about 1870, states it was found at "'Middle Eiver, 

 C. B." Honeyman in his Giants and Pigmies (p. 87) says it 

 was ploughed up on the intervale of Walker's farm, at Middle 

 Eiver, about nine miles from its mouth. The McEae farm, 

 however, where the bone was discovered, was never owned l)y 

 a Walker, nor was there a Walker family settled there. Alex- 

 ander McEae had inherited it from his father, and it is still 

 possessed by McEaes. 



Date of discovery. — The femur was found about 1834 or 

 a few years earlier. One of the latest stick-labels on it, 

 in Honeyman's writing, gives the date as 1842, but this is 

 an error, as well as his statement in Giants and Pigmies that 

 it was found about forty years before, that is about 1846. The 

 first record I find of it is in a manuscript list of articles in 

 the Halifax Mechanics' Institute (founded in 1831), undated, 

 but written on paper watermarked "1833" and therefore pre- 

 pared ajDproximately about 1835, where it is entered as 

 "Eight thighbone of the Fossil Elephant found in the Island 

 Cape Breton, [Presented by] Peter H. Clark, Esq." Then 

 in a manuscript inventory of apparatus, models and specimens 

 in natural history in the museum of the same institution, pre- 

 pared by C. Creed in Jime, 1839, we find listed the "'Femur of 

 fossil Mastodon." An inspection of lists of donations to the 

 Institute, usually given annually in the Nova Scotian news- 

 ■•).aper, may fix the date. The late Alfred F. Halibtirton, of 



