ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT. 277 



still warm enough for them, and as if the shores of the isthmus of 

 Panama were not wide enough to allow them a passage. 



Even the facts upon which Buffon grounded his hypothesis, were 

 not altogether correct. The bones discovered in his time were not 

 those of the elephant. They belonged to another animal, which I 

 shall point out under the name of the Mastodon, and which was also 

 known by the name of the animal of the Ohio. 



But at the present day we have bones which are most positively 

 those of the elephant ; numerous authors attest the fact. 



We may observe a real elephant's jaw very well engraved, in a plate 

 in Drayton's work on South Carolina *. It was found, with several 

 others, in 1794, by Colonel Senf, in a marsh at Biggin, near the source 

 of the western branch of the river called the Brazen River, eight or 

 nine feet below the surface. 



In 1797, Mr. George Turner read to the American Society of Phi- 

 ladelphia a paper, the object of which was to shew, that besides the 

 denticulated teeth of the well-known animal of Ohio, there were 

 found in the ancient depots the teeth of another animals, which were 

 transversely straighter, that is to say, the teeth of a real elephant. 



Catesby had already noticed the real fossil teeth of elephants found 

 in that country. " At a place in South Carolina, called Stono," says 

 he, " were discovered three or four teeth of a large animal, which all 

 the negroes who were natives of Africa recognized at once to be the 

 molar teeth of an elephant ; and I have reason to think they were so, 

 having seen some of the same kind imported from Africa t- 



Mr. Barton, who has directed my attention to this passage, very 

 justly remarks, that we are not to infer from it that the teeth were 

 precisely similar to those of Africa, but merely similar to the teeth of 

 elephants in general, (I mean teeth composed of plates) ; in fact, we 

 cannot suppose that Catesby and his negroes were at all qualified to 

 distinguish the different species, at a time when it had not occurred to 

 any naturalist to make the distinction. 



Mr. Barton himself saw the molar of a real elephant drawn from a 

 branch of the river Susquehannah. There was also a portion of a tusk, 

 six feet in length and thirty- one inches in circumference, which would 

 not have measured less than ten feet in length, if it had been entire. 

 It is not a little singular that the Delaware Indians call that branch 

 Chemung, or the river of the Horn J. From a consideration of these 

 facts, Mr. Barton writes in the following terms to M. Lacepede. 

 " They have found in different parts of North America, skeletons and 

 bones of a large animal, bearing a greater or less affinity to the elephant. 

 I have seen some molars of a species, which, if not precisely the same 

 as that of the Asiatic elephant, bears a much stronger resemblance to 



* View of South Carolina as respects her natural and civil concerns. Mr. Mitchell 

 also cites this work in his notes on the English Translation of my Preliminary Dis- 

 course, New York Edition, 1818, p. 402. 



T Catesby's Carolina, vol. ii, p. 7. 



J Extract of a Letter from Mr. Smith Barton to Cuvier. 



VOL. I. C 6 



