234 



AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANTS. 



asserted that Dr. W. M. Dickeson discovered in Mississippi, 

 east of Natchez, remains of Megalonyx, Mylodon, Mastodon, 

 Equus Americanus (Leidy) , Bootherium, Cervus, Ursus, Tapirus, 

 &c. 'in a tenacious blue clay which underlies the diluvial 

 Drift.' l The precise determination of the geological age of 

 the deposit in this instance is of the very highest importance, 

 since, at a depth of about two feet below the skeletons of 

 Megalonyx and other extinct genera, it yielded, according to 

 Dr. Dickeson, the greater part of an os innominatum, which 

 was identified as being of an adolescent human subject, and 

 which proved to be strictly in the same fossil state, as regards 

 colour, density, and mineral condition, as the bones of Me- 

 galonyx and the other associated animals. Had both the 

 asserted facts been satisfactorily established, the antiquity of 

 the human race would have been carried back in America to 

 a period infinitely more remote, than has anywhere as yet 

 been claimed for it through recent investigations in Europe. 

 But the term ' diluvial drift ' appears to have been used, in 

 this instance, in the vague comprehensive sense in which it 

 was generally applied by geologists, before the labours of 

 Prestwich, Godwin-Austen, and other observers had dis- 

 criminated the relations of the true ' glacial drift ' from those 

 of the Yalley Gravels and Loess deposits. I am informed by 

 Sir Charles Lyell, that the bed of material overlying the ' blue 

 clay ' at Natchez is of the nature of a Loess or Lehm deposit, 

 and that the clay itself is probably of a more modern date 

 than the ' true drift.' A shade of suspicion has been cast on 

 the identification of the fossil itself, as having been derived 

 from a human subject, by a remark made by Dr. Leidy, who 

 has examined and identified the associated remains. 2 Other 

 instances have been appealed to in proof of the Probosci- 

 dean and Edentate Fauna having preceded the ' drift ' in the 

 United States ; but in no case as yet, has the evidence been 

 as conclusive, as it can be shown to be with regard to the 

 Mammoth in Europe. 



§ 5. Synonymy or American Fossil Elephants. 



The Elephant molars, occurring so abundantly along with 

 Mastodon Ohioticus in the United States have, since the time 

 of Cuvier, been almost universally referred to E. primigenius. 



1 Proceed. Acad. Nat. Scien. Phila- 

 delpli. 1846, vol. iii. p. 107, and Leidy, 

 op. cit. p. 6. 



2 ' With these specimens, and present- 

 ing the same general appearance of 

 colour, compactness, &c, was discovered 

 the so-called fossil human innominate 

 hone.' (Leidy, ' Extinct Sloth Trihe,' p. 



6.) The authenticity of the specimen 

 and of the identification is strongly 

 maintained in Morton's ' Types of Man- 

 kind,' by Nott and Gliddon, p. 343. Sir 

 Charles Lyell no longer doubts the 

 authenticity of the bone as contempo- 

 raneous with the associated remains. 



