324 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDKRMATOUS QU.VDRUPEDS. 



two essays, which I have not been able to procure, but which are in- 

 serted in the Gottingen Magazine of Literature and Science. 



M. Autenrietli, professor at Tubingue, having had the kindness to 

 send me copies of these same drawings, explained them to me quite 

 diiferently, and in accordance witli their real situation ; but spite of 

 any great respect for the penetration of this learned man, to whom I 

 have been bound by the closest bonds of friendship from my boyhood, 

 the authority of Camper was sufficient to leave some doubts still 

 remaining. 



In this emergency, I addressed myself to the son of that celebrated 

 anatomist, M. Adrian Camper, as being the better qualified to enlighten 

 me on the subject, as his illustrious father, a short time previous to his 

 death, had acquired possession of the identical specimens which had 

 been the original of the drawing which had caused so much em- 

 barrassment. 



That accomplished philosopher, whose loss has been severely felt by 

 the cultivators of natural liistory and anatomy, at first supported the 

 opinion of his father, with a zeal well becoming the memory of so great a 

 man ; but after fresh objections on my part, and a fresh examination on 

 his, he wrote to me in the following terms on the 14th of .June, 1800 : 

 — " The result of my researches on the unknown animal of Ohio, is 

 not conformable with what I formerly put forward on the subject ; the 

 piece in question is not the anterior, but the posterior fragment of the 

 jaws." And he proceeded to demonstrate this proposition by a multi- 

 tude of" new and refined arguments drawn from his extensive knowledge 

 of comparative anatomy, which he had acquii ed under one of the 

 greatest masters tliat science ever had. M, Adrian Camper has given 

 an account of that discussion in the anatomical description of the 

 elephant by his father, which he published in 1802, p. 22. 



But whilst we were thus busying ourselves in Europe, about a few 

 fragments of this animal, Mr. Peale was sedulously employed in col- 

 lecting the bones ; and he was fortunate enough to procure two ske- 

 letons almost entire, which have set the question at rest for ever. 



In the spring of 1801, he was informed that in the preceding autumn 

 several large bones had been discovered in digging a marl pit in the 

 neighbourhood of Nevvburg, on the river Hudson in the state of New 

 York, and at the distance of sixty miles from the capital. He imme- 

 diately hurried to the spot, accompanied by his sons ; and having dis- 

 covered a considerable part of a skeleton in the house of a farmer, he 

 purchased it, and had it conveyed to Philadelphia. There was a skull, 

 whose upper part was very much damaged; the lower jaw Vv'as broken, 

 and the tusks mutilated by the awkwcirdness and hurry of the work- 

 men. To continue the search, it was necessary to wait until the ter- 

 mination of the harvest. It v/as resumed the following autumn ; the 

 hole was emptied of the water which had <;ollected in it ; pumps were 

 erected to clear it of the water that kept flowing in as they proceeded 

 with the work; no expensa was spared ; but after many weeks' inces- 

 sant labour, and the discovery of all the vertebrae of the neck, many 

 of those of the back of the two shoulder-blades, two humeri, the radius, 

 cubitus, and femur, a tibia, and a fibula, a mutilated pelvis, and some 

 small bones of the feet, 'A lying at a depth of six or seven feet from 



