CHAP. XXIV.] OR ZEUGLODON. 75 



chambers of a large nautilus, which were at first 

 mistaken by Koch for the paddles of the huge 

 animal. Portions of the vertebral column, exhibited 

 by him, in 1845, at New York and Boston, were 

 procured in Washington county, fifteen miles dis 

 tant in a direct line from this place, where the head 

 was discovered.* Some single vertebra, which I 

 found here, were so huge and so impregnated with 

 carbonate of lime, that I could not lift them from 

 the ground without an effort. Professor Jeffries 

 Wyman was the first who clearly pointed out that 

 the bones, of which the factitious skeleton called 

 Hydrarchos was made up, must have belonged to 

 different individuals. They were in different stages 

 of ossification, he said, some adult, others immature, 

 a state of things never combined in one and the same 

 individual. Mr. Owen had previously maintained, 

 that the animal was not reptilian, but cetacean, be 

 cause each tooth was furnished with double roots, 

 implanted in corresponding double sockets. After 

 my return from America, a nearly entire skull of 

 the zeuglodon was found by Mr. S. F. Holmes and 

 Professor L. R. Gibbes, of Charleston, S. C., and it 

 was found to have the double occipital condyles, only 

 met with in mammals, and the convoluted tympanic 

 bones which are characteristic of cetaceans, so that 

 the real nature of this remarkable extinct species of 

 the whale tribe has now been placed beyond all 

 doubt. 



Feb. 5. -- On my return from this excursion, 



* See &quot; American Journ. of Science,&quot; New Series, vol. i. 

 p. 312. 



E 2 



