330 ON TUE FOSSIL B0N£3 OK rACil f DERJIATOeb QUAI?RUP£I;S. 



My brother academician, M. Bosc, a profound naturalist, was 

 present at the discovery of five jaw-bones partly decayed, in the open- 

 ino- of the trenches of the canal of Carolina, fifteen miles from Charles- 

 ton, iu a fine sand, three feet below the surface^ Mr. Turner also 

 bears witness to the same fact. 



At the time when Mr. Jefferson wrote, none hud been discovered 

 beyond the thirty-sixth degree of latitude, but Charleston is in the 

 thirty-third. Up to the present period, this is the most southern point 

 where they have been discovered on this side of the mountains. But 

 in Louisiana they have been found in three or four different spots in 

 the country inundated by the Mississippi, to the west of that river, in 

 the country of the Apelonsians, which is near the thirty-first degree.* 

 I have myself inspected and engraved two enormous jaw-teeth, found 

 in that country, and purchased at New Orleans by M. MarteL the 

 French consul at Louisiana. 



^Vith regard to the north, Mr. Smith Barton, has informed me that 

 none have been exhumed higher up than towards the forty-third 

 degree of latitude, in the direction of Lake Erie. 



I have not as yet seen a single piece from South America : all the teeth 

 brought from Peron, by Dombey and Humboldt, and from Terra Firma 

 by the latter, are of another species, though of the same genus, as we 

 shall see hereafter. I have a strong suspicion that those of the 

 Brazils and Lima, mentioned by William Hunter in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, No. Iviii, page 40, are in the same predicament. 



Thus, as far as our own knowledge goes on the subject, the bones 

 of this huge animal, though very common in North America, are 

 rarely found in an^^ other country, if indeed they do exist at all. But 

 wherever they are found, they are at a short distance from the surface, 

 and yet they are in general very little decayed. Neither are they 

 much disturbed, and like almost all the fossil bones, they give evidence 

 of their having remained in the places where they are found from the 

 period of the death of the animal. 



Those of the river of the Great Osages before mentioned, had 

 something peculiar in their position. They were all in a vertical 

 posture, as if the animals had merely sunk in the swampy turf. The 

 ferruginous substances with which they are tinged or impregnated, 

 form the chief proof of their long sojourn in the interior of the earth. 

 The indications of a stay, or of a passage, of the sea over them, are 

 more rare than in the case of the bones of elephants. I have not 

 observed any remains of shells or zoophytes on the bones of the great 

 mastodon which 1 have examined, nor have I found in an)' account, 

 that they have been found in the places from which these bones have 

 been extracted — a circumstance so much the more extraordinary, as we 

 might be tempted to look upon these salt marshes, where they are 

 found in the greatest abundance, as the remains of a more extensive 

 liquid surface, which might have destroyed those animals. 



Mr. Barton is of opinion that these salt waters have contributed to 

 the excellent state of preservation in which these fossils are found. 



* William Dunbar. Transactions of the American Society, vol vi, page 4 0, and 

 Martin Duralde, Ibid, pnge 55. 



