ON THE BONES OF THE MASTODON. 329 



animal; fro^ii which they concluded that tliese .were the precise sub- 

 stances on which the animal subsisted. 



The bottom of this entire country is calcareous stone, full of impres- 

 sions of shells ; the caverns yield a quantity of nitre, sulphate of soda, 

 and of magnesia. They have since discovered there some sulphate of 

 barytum, and divers mineral springs. Nor are these bones less fre- 

 quent on the other side of the three great chains of the Alleghanies, the 

 North and Blue Mountains. 



We have before spoken in detail of the two skeletons collected by 

 Mr. Peale in 1801, near the Hudson and the Wallkill, in the state of 

 New York. This country seems to abound beyond any other in the 

 bones of the mastodon. Sylvanus Miller and Dr. James G. Graham 

 have noticed it in the fourth volume of the Medical Repository. In the 

 month of May, 1817, Dr. Mitchell witnessed the exhuming of several 

 bones in a small pasture ground at Chester, in the county of Orange : 

 they were surrounded with vegetable fibres, resembling straw, and 

 covered with four feet of turf. 



The bones were not in a good state of preservation : they consisted 

 of the feet, the spine, a shoulder plate, an upper and lower jaw, more 

 or less perfect. Tliere were also some molar teeth, and some tusks, 

 one of which was nine feet in length*. 



Mr. Mitchell likewise tells us'of a molar with six points, exhumed in 

 the county of Rockland in the same State, near the town of Hampstead, 

 thirty-four miles from the capitalf . 



M. Autenrieth assures me that they are to be met with in many of 

 the anterior parts of Pennsylvania. Mr. Mitchell distinctly specifies a 

 depot found near Bedford in the same State. The late Mr. Smith 

 Barton gave me notice of the discovery of some in tlie state of New 

 Jersey, fifteen miles from Philadelphia. 



In IS 11 some considerable portions were exhumed on the banks of 

 the York river, six miles to the east of Williamsburg in Virginia ; 

 amongst them were the ossa innominata, a femur, two vertebrae of 

 the back, two ribs almost entire, two tusks in a very fair state of 

 preservation, seven jaw-bones, four of which were still adhering to 

 their sockets and appeared to belong to the lower jaw. These bones 

 were in a marshy soil, intersected with the roots of the cypress, which 

 must anciently have flourished on the soil. Mr. Mitchell states these 

 facts on the authority of a letter of Bishop Madisson, which I have 

 already had occasion to quote|. 



Mr. Turner mentions some found at Wilmington and Newbern, in 

 North Carolina§. 



I observe by a letter addressed from Charleston, by Governor Dray- 

 ton to Sir John Sinclair, an extract of which has been communicated 

 to me by the Earl of Buchan, as well as by a work of the same person 

 on South Carolina, that these bones, as well as those of the elephant 

 or real mammoth, are found in the southern parts of that province. 



* Mitchell ap. Cuvier. New York Edition, 1818. p. 376. 



f Ibid, plate vi, figs. 1 aud 2. 



X Mitchell loc. cit. page 399 ; Medical Repository, vol. xv, page 388.. 



§ Memoir heit'ore quoted, page 216, note. 



