244 UN THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUAUUUPKUS. 



Gradually as we approach our own epoch, we find observations of 

 this description more certain and determined. The drawing of the 

 real jaw of an elephant has been published by M. de la Tourette, in 

 the ninth volume of the Savans Etrangers, of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences, page 747. It w r as found in 1760, near Saint Vallier, a quarter 

 of a league from the Rhone, in a gravelly soil mixed with shells, eighty 

 feet above the level of that river. 



M. Guilliermin, mayor of Vienne, has recently sent a jaw, in a 

 high state of preservation, to the King's Museum. It was found in a 

 gravel bed near the town, in 18!'4. 



M. Polonceau, an engineer of roads and bridges, has sent another 

 from the same place. 



They are found higher up on the Rhone ; for as I am informed by 

 Mr. Pictet, we may see in the museum of M. de Saussure, a tusk found 

 near Geneva. 



They are likewise to be found in Provence. M. Arnaud de Pemois- 

 son, attorney-general at the court of Aix, is in possession of the lower 

 jaw of an elephant, found in the neighbourhood of Riez, in the de- 

 partment of the lower Alps. I have the fact from himself. 



Nor is the right bank of the Rhone without its share. Independently 

 of what we have already mentioned on the authority of Jean Lamaire, 

 and Cassanion, M. Soularie tells us of an almost perfect skeleton, dis^ 

 covered in the neighbourhood of Lavoute, in the department of Ar- 

 deche, in the banks of deposits, near the Rhone*. 



M. Faujas describes a tusk found by M. Lavalette, in the commune 

 of Arbres, near Villeneuve de Berg, in the same department, at the foot 

 of Mount Coirons, five feet below the surface of the soil, embedded in 

 a volcanic tufof. The proprietor of this tusk has sent a part of it to 

 the King's Museum. 



M. Cordier, inspector of mines, who has recently succeeded M. 

 Faujas in the chair of geology at the Museum of Natural History, has 

 favoured me with a note upon the position of this latter tusk, which 

 he examined with attention. It was iricrusted in the interior of a 

 solid volcanic lair, which not only forms the summit of the hill of 

 Arbres, but spreads itself in horizontal beds beneath the whole range 

 of the Cairons, forming their chief foundation. Though in a high state 

 of preservation elsewhere, this lair is almost entirely decomposed at 

 Arbres, and is there reduced to a yellow clay, in which the pyroxenous 

 particles have alone remained entire : the whole of this volcanic soil 

 reposes upon a deep bed of compact calcareous shell, diversely inclined. 

 It were to be washed it had been ascertained with accuracy whether 

 these tusks were enveloped in the body of the volcanic bed itself, or 

 merely in some of its ancient excrements^. However, M. Cordier 

 knows several other places where bones are enveloped in volcanic 

 matter. 



As we approach the Pyrennees, we meet with several other remains 



* Natural Hist, of Southern France, vol. iii, p. 9S. 



T Annals of the Museum of Natural History, vol. ii, p. 24. 



X See the map of Coirons, published in the Natural History of Southern France. 



