246 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDRRMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



King's Museum, where they are at present deposited. They likewise 

 discovered a large quantity of them at Porentruy, in the ancient bishop- 

 rick of Bale, while cutting a road in 1779. I have placed a molar tooth 

 of this collection, given to me by M. Scarfenstein, a grazier of Mont- 

 beliard, in the King's Museum ; it is remarkable for the breadth of its 

 plates. 



As we advance towards Paris, we find them at Orleans. In the 

 King's Museum there is a portion of the lower part of a thigh, a 

 portion of calcaneum, and a portion of the dorsal vertebra, contributed 

 by M. Chouteau. 



The same collector has just sent from Avaray near Beaugency, some 

 very fine fragments of ivory. 



The vicinity of Paris furnishes its share as well as the other pro- 

 vinces. In the King's Museum there is a jaw and the fragment of 

 a tusk found in the embankment of the Seine, near Argenteuil. 



The Marquis de Cubieres, member of the Academy of Sciences, has 

 in his possession a jaw found near Meudon, at a considerable depth in 

 the sand. 



Even within the circuit of Paris, and close to the Salpetriere, they 

 discovered some in 1 8 1 1 , ten feet below the surface, and like the others, 

 in a bed of sand. 



While cutting the canal for conducting the waters of the Ourcq to 

 the capital, they dug up two of the largest jaws and tusks I have ever 

 seen, in three different parts of the forest of Bondy. Mr. Girard, the 

 celebrated engineer and director-in-chief of this canal, has been kind 

 enough to transmit them to me, with a view to their being placed in 

 the Museum. They have since found in the same place the upper ex- 

 tremity of a shoulder indicating an elephant from fifteen to sixteen 

 feet high : a tusk more than four feet long, and several other 

 fragments. 



As I have carefully examined the place where they were found, in 

 company with M. Girard and M. Alexander Brongniart, the learned 

 mineralogist, I think it may not be unseasonable to give a short de- 

 scription of it here. 



The canal is cut through the plain of Pantin and Bondy, which rises 

 from seventy to eighty feet above the level of the Seine, comprehend- 

 ing the bases of the gypseous hills of Montmartre and Belleville. This 

 plain has been pierced to the depth of forty feet, and has been found 

 to be composed of different layers of sand, marl, and clay. Calcareous 

 stone was no where to be met with ; although it is found at the level 

 of the river at St. Ouen. In some places the canal traverses strata of 

 gypsum, which extend in a parallel direction with the base of the hill 

 of Belleville. We shall hereafter have occasion to remark, that it ap- 

 pears that clay and sand have gradually filled the intervals of the gyp- 

 seous hills. The most elevated part of the plain, that which divides the 

 waters falling into the Seine and those falling into the Marne, is near 

 Sevrans in the forest of St. Denis. Nevertheless, it has not been 

 found necessary to dig lower than from thirty to forty feet, a circum- 

 stance which proves how inconsiderable this elevation is, compared 

 with the rest of the plain. The ground in that quarter consists in a 

 great measure of a yellow marl, alternating with beds of green clay, 



