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APPENDIX. 



B. — Page 6. 



It may be useful to publish an account of the Mastodon exhumation communicated to 

 the author by a scientific gentleman, who was present during a part of it, James Darrach, Esq., 

 of Orange County. 



" On the evening of the 12th day of August, 1845, the laborers, who had been occupied 

 that day in digging marl upon the farm of Nathaniel Brewster, Esq., announced to him they 

 had struck upon something hard. Some said, ' a rock ; ' others, ' a log ; ' others jestingly, ' a 

 mammoth.' 



" Early the next morning, Mr. Brewster, and his son-in-law George Clinton Weeks, ex- 

 amined the supposed rock, which was soon found to be bone. The latter seized a shovel, and, 

 clearing the marl (he keeping next the bone) with the assistance of the laborers, exposed to the 

 view of more than a hundred spectators the massive skull and long white tusks of a Mastodon. 

 Soon shear-poles and tackles were obtained, arranged, and, amid excitement, cheerings, and 

 many cautions, the skull and tusks were prepared for raising out of the ground. The top of 

 the skull was about five feet below the surface. In the act of raising, one tusk broke about the 

 middle of its length into two pieces ; the butt remaining in the socket, the point in its marly bed. 

 The other cracked at about the same point of its length, but did not part. The top of the skull 

 was upward, while the line of direction of skull and tusks was westward and somewhat down- 

 ward. 



" These being removed, the lower jaw, twisted slightly from the above direction, and the 

 atlas (or top bone of the neck), were developed. The condyles of the occiput (backbone of 

 the head) sat upon their sockets in the atlas, which was turned upon the dentata (second bone 

 of the neck). The dental process of the dentata was nearly vertical. Below the dentata, in 

 juxtaposition, were found the other vertebrae of the neck, one above another in a nearly vertical 

 direction, slightly inclined forward. Upon their removal appeared the vertebras of the back. 

 From first dorsal to last lumbar they lay in a natural succession, and in a direction nearly north 

 and south, cutting the plane of the horizon at a small angle, the greatest elevation being at the 

 first dorsal ; the greatest depression, at the last lumbar vertebra. The spinous processes of the 

 back were vertical, pointing backward. 



" At an early period of the exhumation of these vertebra?, on the right side, were discovered, 

 near the position of the right shoulder, on the outside of it, the bones of the right hind foot, 

 which led to the discovery of the bones of that limb in natural order to the ossa innominata (or 

 bones of the pelvis). They lay parallel with the back nearly, and downward toward the toes. 



