LICKS AND CAVES OF LOWEK OHIO VALLEY 157 



Excavating at Big Bono Lick for such remains, mainly those of the masto- 

 don, was a favorite pastime for such prominent personages as General William 

 Henry Harrison (1795), Doctor Goforth, of Cincinnati (1804), President 

 Thomas Jefferson (1807), and John Clifford, of Lexington, Kentucky (1816- 

 1817). 



What became of the Harrison Collection, consisting of thirteen hogsheads 

 of hones and teeth, shipped by river to Pittsburgh, is not known. The Goforth 

 Collection, which included a four-horse-wagOD load of teeth, entrusted to the 

 notorious Thomas Ashe for exhibit in England, soon after its arrival there 

 was sold and its proceeds appropriated by the latter. The hulk of this collec- 

 tion is now in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The Jefferson Col- 

 lection was divided hy him into three portions. One of these he presented to 

 the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, another to the National 

 Institute of France, and the remaining third he reserved for his own private 

 collection. What became of the latter is not known. The Clifford Collection, 

 at the death of the owner, in 1820, became by purchase the property of the 

 Academy of Science in Philadelphia. 



Successful excavations at the lick were carried on by other parties from 

 time to time, the latest being by Prof. Nathaniel Shaler in 1860. A remark- 

 able quantity of bones and teeth of various mammals, living and extinct, were 

 obtained as the result of all these excavations, those belonging to the masto- 

 don and mammoth alone being estimated by Mr. William Cooper in 1840 to 

 have represented in individuals one hundred of the former and twenty of the 

 latter. There is no indication, however, that the supply of these remains at 

 Big Bone Lick had approached exhaustion when interest in them languished 

 and excavating for them ceased. 



Little effort was ever made to find these remains at other licks in the Ohio 

 Valley, the only one having come to the notice of the writer being that of a 

 Air. Hunter, who in recent years has obtained a fine collection from the Lower 

 Blue Lick in Nicholas County, Kentucky. 



The caves known in the early day as the result of the development of the 

 saltpeter industry also came in for their share of attention as repositories of 

 these remains. 



In 1805 Dr. Samuel Brown, of Lexington, referred to in the Medical and 

 Physical Journal of Philadelphia for December of that year as "the very re- 

 spectable and ingenious Dr. Samuel Brown,'' presented to the Academy of 

 Science of Philadelphia the skull of what was at first supposed to be that of 

 a "sus" or "hog," but was later by Dr. Joseph Leidy identified as that of an 

 extinct peccary. This skull was obtained from a saltpeter cave on Crooked 

 ('reek, in what was then Madison, but is now Rockcastle, County, Kentucky. 



John Clifford, about the same time, or perhaps a little later, obtained some 

 megalonyx bones from a cave in White County, Tennessee, which after his 

 death went with the rest of his collection to become the property of the 

 Academy of Science of Philadelphia. 



In 1X14 there was found, either in Mammoth Cave or a neighboring cavern, 

 an Indian mummy, which was described in volume IS of the Medical Reposi- 

 tory for that year. Its description was accompanied by a drawing made by 

 C. S. Ratinesque; also, about the same time, various articles of aboriginal 



