278 BONE CAVE AT PORT KENNEDY. 



40 are extinct, as against 12 plants (the whole list) and 12 animals which still 

 exist. 



Most abundant and testifying to the omnipresence of edible leafage, were the 

 remains of sloths, following which, in order of remarkable frequency, came the 

 bones of skunks, rabbits, tapirs, bears, mastodons, peccaries and turtles. There is 

 nothing in the common tree or plant specimens found to preclude the existence at 

 the spot of such a forest as would have been familiar to modern eyes. But the 



Specimens of darkly discolored boughs and twigs from layer 3 at the Port Kennedy bone fissure, 

 flattened by the down settling of debris in the cave after their deposition by water. With them lie 

 six cones and cone fragmentsof Pinus rigida, likewise flattened when discovered, but which on drying 

 expanded into their present form within a few days. 



seemingly unnatural association of such neotropical animals as the tapir and peccary 

 with the boreal wolverine, suggest several problems of climate and zoological 

 distribution unfortunately left undiscussed by the naturalist who died suddenly 

 before his final estimate of the number of individuals and species had been made. 

 Wheatley, in 1871, found at the same spot 85 individuals and 42 species, of 

 which 11 were neotropical, 3 nearctic, 11 common to northern Europe and America 

 and 9 uncertain. We found 33 species not encountered by him, unearthing no 

 remains of Afy/odon, ox, mole or bat, with but one insect to duplicate his discov- 



the recognized twigs from the slender to the stouter specimens, it is safe to say most belong to the pig nut 

 hickory, Carya porcina Nuttall {Juglans glabra of Miller). 



" Mr. Brown's identifications, so far as they go, accord with mine, but he found in the specimens he examined 

 the hazelnut, Corylus americana, and what he believed to be bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa Michx., but which 

 I should refer to white oak, Q. alba., but the cup is quite large if entombed at the same season with the others 

 (July?)" 



