328 ON IHK FOSSiL BONES OF I'ACHYD KIIM AToUS QUADRUPEDS. 



fluence with the Mississippi. They were in morasses, similar to those 

 of the Great Bone Lick. 



The late Mr. Smith Barton, professor in the University of Pennsjd- 

 vania, and one of those men who have merited most of the new world, 

 by propagating the useful sciences, sent me a confirmation of this 

 testimony at the time at which it occurred. 



He writes thus — " An intelligent traveller has just stated to me that 

 he saw the greatest quantities of the bones of tliis animal in a parti- 

 cular spot, near the river of the Osage Indians. Amongst other speci- 

 mens he has collected seventeen tusks, some of which were six feet 

 long, and a foot in diameter. But the greater part of these bones were 

 in a very advanced state of decomposition*. Moreover, Mr. Barton 

 has had the kindness to send me a molar, which I have placed in 

 the King's Museum. 



Mr. Jefferson, in his observations on Virginia, relates that a Mr. 

 Stanley, who had been conducted by the Indians to the west of the 

 Missouri, saw immense depots of these bones on the banks of a river 

 flowing towards the west. Thus we may entertain hopes of discover- 

 ing them as far as the Pacific Ocean. 



They have been found in greater quantities as we approach the 

 Atlantic, because the countries lying in that direction are better in- 

 habited, and their soils are more frequently explored. 



Mr. Jefferson tells us that some have been exhumed on the branch 

 of the Tennessee called North Holston, behind the Alleghanies of 

 Carolina, at thirty-six degrees of northern latitude ; they were also in 

 a salt swamp. The Tennessee is, as every body knows, one of the tri- 

 butaries of the Ohio. 



It was also in the basin of the Ohio, and on its right bank, in the 

 county of Wythe in Virginia, and contiguous to the county of 

 Green Bryand, where the bones of the megiitherium were found, that 

 the most extraordinary depot of the bones of the mastodon were dis- 

 covered. 



Mr. Barton received an account of it, dated from Williamsburg in 

 Virginia, the 6th of October, 1805, from Bishop Madisson, superior of 

 the college of William and Mary in Virginia., and one of the most 

 enlightened men in the United States. 



M. Pichon, my colleague in the council d'etat, being then consul 

 general of France in the United states, had the kindness to transmit 

 me an account of this discovery. 



On a bank of calcareous stone, five feet and a half beneath the 

 surface of the soil, reposed a suf&cient quantity of bones to raise an 

 expectation of their being ab>fe to form a skeleton of them. One of 

 the teeth weighed seventeen pounds. 



But what renders this discovery unique among so many others, is 

 the circumstance of their finding in the midst of these bones, a half 

 decayed mass of small branches, grasses, and lea,ves, among which 

 they recognized a species of willov/. still common in Virginia ; it was 

 enveloped in a sort ox bag, which appeared to be the stomach of the 



Extract of a letter from !Mr. Smith Barton, of Philadelphia, in 1806. 



