E.. Andrews—Dr. Koch and the Missouri Mastodon. 33 
and one whose honor and truth are above every shade of sus- 
picion. . 
Many years ayo, Professor Hoy visited the spot from which 
Dr. Koch had exhumed the skeleton now in the British Museum. 
He found the men who assisted him at the work and took 
their account of it. He himself also excavated and recovered 
some fragments of the skeleton missed by Dr. Koch. 
It will be remembered (see Professor Dana’s article on Dr. 
Koch’s pamphlets) that the discoverer of this skeleton claims 
to have found it overlaid by one stratum of alluvium, one: of 
marl, three of clay, and three of conglomerate, amounting to 
some fourteen feet of deposits above the bones. Professor 
Hoy states that this whole list of strata is a pure fiction. The 
skeleton was found close to the surface, with nothing but the 
surface muck over it. The men who assisted at the exhuma- 
tion also informed Dr. Hoy that Dr. Koch did not drain the 
spot, as might have been done without great difficulty, but that 
he and they simply dug out the muck and earth, often work- 
ing up to their waists in the water, and groping with their 
hands at the bottom to find the bones. In these circumstances 
it 1s obvious, aside from the question of veracity, that no ac- 
curate determination could have been made between flint 
weapons of later date and those which might be contempora- 
neous with the animal. 
hing, 
i very dry seasons, for a ) Perna to be pecgea! set on 
ases 
asconade County may have been scorched in this way, and 
Am. Jour. Sc1.—Tumrp Serres, Vor. X, No. 55.—JULy, 1875. 
3 
