ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THK ELEPHANT OF THE RUSSIANS. 247 



containing here and there patches of hardened marl, and in other spots, 

 of silex menelites, partly filled with alluvial shells. 



In certain spots the beds of clay and marl suddenly sink down- 

 wards, as if they had formed basins, or a species of reservoirs, which 

 have been subsequently filled by foreign matter. In fact, there are at 

 these spots heaps of blackish mould, the superficies of which corre- 

 sponds with the curves of the masses of clay that sink downwards, and 

 which are surmounted at the top by a yellow sand. 



It was in the black clay, eighteen feet below the surface, that they 

 found the teeth and the tusks of elephants. There was also a skull, 

 more or less complete, which was broken by the workmen, the frag- 

 ments of which I have got, as well as several bones belonging to the 

 genus oxen, and other ruminants of minor proportions ; and, what was 

 peculiarly remarkable, an easily distinguishable skull of that large 

 species of stag so celebrated among geologists, under the improper 

 title of the Irish fossil elk. 



The yellow sand surmounting the surface, contains many common 

 fresh- water shells, some linnnea, and some planorbia ; but the black 

 mould does not contain any, nor the green clay or yellow marl, in 

 which it is encased. The ivory is very much decomposed : the jaws 

 are less so, and the other bones scarcely at all. The greater part do 

 not appear to have been injured. 



Two portions of jaws from Gierard in Brie, a league fromCrecy, 

 are mentioned by Daubenton. They were in a sand pit, ten feet below 

 the surface *. 



M. de Villarce, member of the Agricultural Society of Province, has 

 sent two of a similar description from Champagne, to the King's 

 Museum. 



The late M. Petit Radel, professor of medicine at Paris, had in his 

 museum a large jaw exhumed at Villebertin, near Troyes, in a gravel 

 bank. Neither is Lorraine deficient in those remains. 



The Baron de Serviere gives a drawing of an upper jaw, strongly 

 characterised t. found beneath the bed of the Moselle, near Pont-a- 

 Mousson. 



A germ consisting of nine plates, had been sent to the Museum by 

 M. de Champel J. 



Buchoz in his first series of illuminated and non-illuminated plates, 

 gives the drawing of the fifth tooth of an elephant, which was found pe- 

 trified in the neighbourhood of Dieulouard, between Pont-a-Mousson 

 and Nancy, and a molar tooth found in the neighbourhood of Pont-a- 

 Mousson, more than ten inches long. 



M. Berger, president of a.learned society of Treves, sent me, in 1810, 

 the drawing of a thigh four feet long, exhumed in what then formed 

 the department of the Sarre. 



There are quantities of these bones to be found in Picardy. In 

 1813, they exhumed at Amiens, in a place called the Faubourg de 



* Daubentou's Nat. Hist., vol. xi, No. mxxviii, and the Mus. of the Acad, of 

 Sc, 1762. 



T Physical Journal, vol. xiy^«pr 3 7F25,, ~ ' '***- «, T 

 X Nat. Hist., vol. xi, Jtf<5fM*xxT..l J 



