ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THE ELEPHANT. 281 



journals, particularly in the Moniteur of the 13th of September of the 

 same yenr. 



The Duke of Decazes has presented to the King's Museum, the 

 jaw of an elephant exhumed at Bonsac, upon the left bank of the 

 Dordogne, a hundred and twenty feet beneath the level of the river, 

 and fifteen beneath the surface of the soil, in a gravel pit, covered with 

 six feet of compact earth, mixed with the fragments of silex. 



M. Dubuisson, keeper of the Museum of Natural History at Nantes, 

 has sent me drawings as large as life of a large portion of the bassin of 

 an elephant, and part of three bones drawn out of the river Seille in 

 Burgundjr. This specimen is very much decomposed, and almost friable ; 

 a coat of hydrated limonous iron has overspread it, and penetrated 

 into its texture. 



The Marchioness of Eckmhul has presented to the King's Museum, 

 a portion of a tusk found in May, 1814, at Viry Chatillon, in the 

 department of the Seine and Oise, and near the road to Fontainbleau. 

 It was lying in a bed of gravel five or six feet in depth, a hundred 

 and fifty toises from the bed of the river. 



Holland. — On the 24th of March, 1820, Francis van der Willigen, 

 a labourer residing in the village of Heukelom, in the country of 

 Gorcum in Holland, while inspecting the rupture of a dyke situated 

 between the Whaal and the Leek, discovered the head of a fossil ele- 

 phant almost entire. M. de Boemans, of Dort, has had the kindness to 

 present me with an etching of this specimen, which derives additional 

 value from the circumstance of its presenting us with a perfect repre- 

 sentation of long alveoli of the tusks, which form the characteristics of 

 this species. The length, from the edge of these alveoli to the occi- 

 pital condyles, is forty-one inches of the measurement of the Rhine, 

 and the alveoli themselves are twenty-three inches long and seven 

 broad. In other respects, these heads are similar to those described 

 farther on. 



Germany. — On the occasion of digging the foundations of the new 

 streets at Stuttgart, in 1819 and 1820, many bones and teeth of 

 elephants were discovered. Amongst others was the fragment of a 

 tusk which was found beneath two feet of vegetable earth and nine feet 

 of red clay. Beneath this clay was a bed composed of fragments of 

 brown freestone five feet thick, reposing upon tufo. 



The fragment of a shoulder blade was discovered five feet below the 

 surface, in a blackish clay ; and in a circumference of fifty feet from the 

 same spot, they found the fragment of a tusk, part of a lower jaw, and a 

 peroneum, all belonging to a young animal, and accompanied by bones 

 of oxen and of stags. 



A large molar tooth was discovered farther on, six feet below the 

 surface, and not far from this, the molar of a rhinoceros. 



Several other specimens were likewise found at Canstadt ; and at 

 Unterturkheim, a village lying at some distance from Canstadt, they 

 found the bones of an elephant and the tooth of an hyena. 



For an account of these discoveries we may consult an essay from 

 the pen of M. Jaeger the younger, inserted in the Wirtemburg An- 

 nual of 1820, p. 147, &c. 



Every day is adding to the discoveries of the bones of elephants in 



