ON THK BONES OF THE MASTODON. 363 



rates lower Austria to the north of the Danube, from the adjoining 

 districts of Hungary. These drawings which have been sent to me 

 by M. Boue, affords incontestable proofs that the bones do in fact pro- 

 ceed from this species ; but perhaps it might be necessary to examine 

 more accurately the place in which they were found, before ascribing to 

 them so remote an antiquity. 



M. Boue, however, seeks to ground his opinion on some bones of 

 ruminants, which he has sent me, surrounded by a substance very 

 similar to our coarse gravel ; and he further adduces in support of his 

 opinion, the lignites of Switzerland, so rich in the bones of the mam- 

 miferi, of which I am about to treat. In fact, I have not the slightest 

 doubt of these lignites containing the bones of many great quadru- 

 peds, and especially of the narrow-toothed mastodon, to which our 

 observations are more peculiarly directed, as M. Meissner has an- 

 nounced in the Museum of Natural History of Berne, and in the 

 Indicateur of the Helvetic Society of Natural History, where he has 

 described and represented very easily distinguishable portions of the 

 teeth of mastodons, from the lignites of Koepfnach, on the western 

 bank of the lake of Zurich. 



The Count Vitalliano Borromeo, of Milan, has had the extreme 

 kindness to submit to rny inspection four specimens extracted from the 

 lignites of Horgen, a little above Koepfnach- Among them is a small 

 molar of two denticuli, and two fragments of a tusk, perfectly recog- 

 nizable by their interior texture, similar to that of ivory, and their 

 enamel longitudinally channelled, like that of the fragment of Sariac, 

 which I have already mentioned. 



I have this moment before my eyes a drawing made by M. Schintz, 

 professor at Zurich, of three great jaw teeth, two of which are still 

 adhering to the jaw, and which evidently belong to the mastodon. 

 These two have] been extracted from the lignites of Koepfnach. A 

 broken tusk was found with them, which must have been two feet 

 and a half in length. Its enamel is channelled, like that of the pieces 

 which I have just described. The mastodon is not the only species 

 whose remains are contained in these lignites. 



Another drawing by M. Schintz, represents the upper portion of the 

 jaw of a rhinoceros, probably of the species with partitioned nostrils, 

 containing three teeth, two of which are still entire. This specimen 

 comes from EIgg, near Winterthur, on the frontier of the canton of 

 Zurich, and that of Thurgovie. 



To the friendship of M. Brongniart I am indebted for the jaw of a 

 beaver, with very well characterised molars. It comes from the same 

 place, viz. Horgen, and is still enclosed in the lignites. 



These facts are probably of the same order as those bearing upon the 

 bones of the Lophiodon of the black lands in the neighbourhood of 

 Laon, of which I shall treat in the second section of the tenth chapter. 

 They prove one of two things, either a more remote period for the 

 existence of the mastodon, than that which the result of my researches 

 has led me to attribute to it, or the existence of distinctions in the 

 strata of lignites, more numerous than those which have as yet been 

 recognized by geologists. 



It is not very long since lignites and pitcoal were confounded to- 



