ON THE BONES OF THE MASTODON". 32? 



Mr. Turner assures us that on both sides of the little stream there are 

 beds entirely composed of the bones of buffaloes, stags, and other small 

 animals : he further states, that he remarked that these bones are 

 nearly all fractured, and he goes so far as to suppose that they were 

 accumulated in that spot by mastodons that made these sinaller animals 

 their prey*. 



Jefferson had this spot explored in 1806, as we have already men- 

 tioned in the chapter on elephants, and extracted from it the specimens 

 which that great and wise magistrate has presented to our Museum, 



Part of these pieces are still overlaid with the turf in which they had 

 been buried. It is blackish, with a mixture of fine sand ; some ligneous 

 particles are still discernable in it. When united with nitric acid it 

 gives forth a fetid odour, announcing an animal principle. M. Chevreul 

 was kind enough to examine it a,t my request, and found that out of a 

 iiundred parts, nearly seventy-five were clay, sixteen sand, and five 

 were sulphate of chalk. The clay contained carbonate of chalk and 

 sulphate of iron ; there was also a little oxide of iron. According to M, 

 Che^Teul, this turf bears a strong resemblance to certain peats of 

 Picardy, which are used for manuring lands. 



Nevertheless, the bones of the mastodon are found not only on other 

 parts of the banks of the Ohio, but in all the temperate regions of 

 North America, in whatsoever direction it is examined. 



In the Physical and Medical Journal of Philadelphia, published by 

 the late Dr, Smith Barton, 1st part, page 154, appears a detailed ac- 

 count of five skeletons almost entire, found in 1762 by the savages 

 called Chawanias, much higher up, three miles from the left bank 

 of the Ohio, and, as is almost always the case, in a salt and humid 

 ground ; a jaw and the fragment of a tusk were transported to Fort 

 Pitt. 



The Baron de Bock, of Anspach, in a memoir addressed some time 

 since to the Institute, gives a description of a tooth found on the right 

 bank of the Ohio, between the two rivers Miamis, by Major Craig, an 

 officer in the artillery of the United States. From the Museum of M. 

 Schraiedel, it was transferred to that of M. Ebel at Hanover, and it is 

 the same mentioned by Merk in his fifth Letter, page 28. 



In 1786, the same officer brought home from the banks of the Ohio, 

 a tibia, part of a tusk, a portion of a jaw and a molar, which have been 

 engraved by Colonel Brahm, and published in the Columbian Maga- 

 zine of Philadelphia. 



According to the account of Dr. Mitchell, an upper jaw was found in 

 July, 1817, in the State of Indiana near the river Blanche, which falls 

 into the Ouabache, one of the tributaries on the right bank of the 

 Ohio. It was twenty and a half inches in breadth, and twenty-five in 

 length. One of the jaw bones was seven inches and three quarters 

 in lengthf . 



General CoUaud tells us that he saw some of these bones near the 

 Great Osage river, which falls into the Missouri, a little above its con- 



* George Turner. Memoir of the extraordinary Fossils denominated Mammoth- 

 Bones. Philadelphia, 1799. This paper was read to the American Society in June, 1 797. 

 t Cuvier. Theory of the Earth. New York Edition, 1818, p. 363. 



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