GILPIN OBSERVATIONS ON SOME FOSSIL BONES. 401 



opposite or south side has the same exposure and fossils. The 

 clay is postpliocene and of the Lake Champlain period. I am 

 indebted to my friend Dr. Honey man, who visited the Jacquet, for 

 these facts. 



The fossil bones consist of eighteen vertebra, a small portion of 

 the atlas, about twelve fragments so thick and so marked by nearly 

 obsolete sutures, as to prove them portions of the base of the skull, 

 the petrous portion of one ear, about one-half of the lower jaw, a 

 fragment of the sternum, fragments of both scapulas, one humerus, 

 radius ulna and phalanx, one or two ribs, and numerous fragments 

 of ribs, and spinous processes of vertebra. They are entirely free 

 of animal matter, of a light fawn color and so dry or chalky as to 

 leave a dusty mark upon everything they touched. From compari- 

 son with some of the recent bones in the Halifax Museum of some 

 of the smaller Cetaceans, and with the beautiful plates of the bones 

 of the Boston whale, (B. musculus) by Dr. Dwight, Boston N. H. 

 Society, there can be no doubt but that they are the remains of 

 some ancient small Cetacean inhabiting the Champlain clay period. 



Of the eighteen vertebra, four are dorsals, ten lumbar, and four 

 caudal. The four dorsal are all more or less incomplete in the 

 neural arch, and transverse processes or diaphophices. The largest 

 one measures in its centrum or body, two and three-fourths inches 

 transverse section of articulating surface, and two inches in length. 

 The height of the neural arch is one inch and three quarters, and 

 two and one-half breadth of the floor of the arch. The spinous 

 processes in all are incomplete. In all these four, the diaphophices 

 or transverse processes spring from the sides of the neural arch, 

 above the body of the vertebra, but each one a little lower down 

 than the one preceding it. The ends of the processes show strongly 

 marked articulating surfaces for the ribs. 



Of the fourteen remaining, ten may be considered lumbar. 

 The largest measures four inches long and three inches transverse 

 diameter. They are all deficient in neural arch and transverse 

 processes, but from a depression on the upper surface you can 

 make out the floor of the arch. This in the largest one measured, 

 measures only an inch and a half transverse diameter, wMst in 

 others nearly of the same size, but lower down in the series, it 



