256 OX THE FOSSIL HONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADUUI'KD*. 



stone, between the Necke'r and the Rhine (the Blaek Forest). These 

 marly hills frequently yield petrified plants and layers of coal, and their 

 summits are covered with marine petrifactions;, such as ammonites 

 and belemnites. 



Mr. Autenrieth has found an entire forest of prostrate trunks of 

 palm trees. 



It was a soldier who was the first to remark some bones protruding 

 from the earth, in April, 1 700. Eberhardt-Louis, the then reigning 

 duke, caused the excavations to be continued for six months. The 

 most perfect specimens were preserved with care, the residue amount- 

 ing to a prodigious quantity ; for, as Reisel assures us, there were 

 no less than sixty tusks sent to the medical establishment of the 

 court, to be used for fossil ivory. The bones themselves were lying in 

 confusion, in a great measure broken; some of them decomposed, and 

 they did not bear any proportion to each other. There were, for in- 

 stance, hoi'ses' teeth in cart-loads, without any bones for the tenth 

 part of them. The elephants' bones seemed to have been more ele- 

 vated than most of the others. In general, there were none to be 

 found lower than twenty feet. A portion of them was entangled in 

 a species of rock formed of clay, sand, shells, and ochre compacted to- 

 gether, and they were obliged to use gunpowder to disengage them. 



The elephant bones still remaining in the Royal Museum at Stutt- 

 gardt consist of the following pieces: — A portion of the upper jaw, 

 with two molar teeth perfectly parallel ; two upper anterior molares, 

 quite entire, and the fragments of two others ; the lines of enamel, 

 in the worn parts, as in almost all the fossil molar teeth, were slight 

 and-straight, almost without wreaths, and angular in the centre ; four 

 back upper molar teeth and two lower; fragments and germs, bearing 

 lines of enamel very well wreathed; a tusk, very much inflected, five 

 feet and a half in length, and another four feet and a half, measured 

 on the convex side ; the fragments of several others ; some portions 

 of vertebra?, and ribs ; four shoulder blades ; three cubiti ; ^ix ossa 

 innominata of the right, and seven of the left side, most of them in- 

 complete ; four upper extremities of thighs ; three main bones of thighs, 

 without upper extremities ; a knee ball, two tibia, and a lower jaw ; and 

 a portion of the tibia, in possession of an apothecary of the same town. 



In the Museum, these bones are accompanied by many of those of 

 the rhinoceros, the hyena, and of animals of the species of the horse, 

 the stag, the ox, the hare, and the small carnassiers. Some very 

 large epiphysed vertebrae might lead us to suppose they belonged to 

 Cetacea. There are also some fragments of human bones, to "which 

 I shall revert. Unfortunately, an accurate account has not been kept 

 of the relative heights at which each particular bone was found during 

 the six months of the excavation, nor a distinction made between the 

 bones found in the entrenchment mentioned by Reisel, and those 

 found beyond its limits. It is worthy of notice, also, that they dug 

 up pieces of charcoal, and fragments of articles manufactured by man, 

 such as vases, &c. &c, which most assuredly could not have been 

 deposited there at the same period as the large bones. 



The same district has yielded fresh remains of elephants during the 

 present century. 



