176 APPENDIX. 



only record of the fact in print is contained in a paper read by Sir Charles Lyell to the Geologi- 

 cal Society of London, and printed in the proceedings for 1843. The tooth, it seems, was then 

 in the Baltimore Museum, having a memorandum with it in my handwriting. 



" Some time in 1847 or 8, I was passing through an obscure alley connecting Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields with Temple Bar, when my attention was arrested by a Mastodon tooth in a shop-win- 

 dow, which seemed to me a fac-simile of the one I had examined with so much interest in the 

 Baltimore Museum. The proprietor of the shop, Rogers (a picture and general dealer), in reply 

 to my inquiries, told me he had bought the tooth as American, and I think he said at one of 

 Steven's sales, the well-known natural history auctioneers in Covent Garden. "We struck a 

 bargain for the fossil ; and I shortly afterwards sent it to Dr. Wilson, with a statement of its 

 remarkable resemblance to the tooth which I supposed still to be safe in the Baltimore Museum. 

 It now, however, appears that the Baltimore tooth, and that purchased by me in Bell Alley of 

 Rogers, are one and the same. 



" As it respects the origin of this fossil, I certainly cannot see the shadow of a reason for 

 doubting the fact of its being American. It is impossible to attribute any intention to deceive 

 on the part of Dr. Duchatel ; for he had placed the specimen in the Museum as a tooth of the 

 common Mastodon Giganteus, and had not even thought it worthy of a label until informed 

 by me of its value. By what probable means could the person who gave it him have become 

 possessed of so rare a fossil as a tooth of the M. Angustidens, unless by digging it up in the 

 way related ? 



" For many years, the occurrence of the Mastodon in the crag of England rested solely on 

 the discovery of the tooth figured by Smith in his ' Strata identified by their Fossils.' This 

 tooth was bought by the British Museum ; but Mr. Konig, (late) the keeper of the geological 

 department, would not have it included in the exhibited collection, because he had doubts 

 about its being a British fossil. Only within the last twelve months, however, more than 

 a dozen of these very teeth have been discovered, in consequence of washing the crag to get 

 out the phosphatic nodules. So much for the value of doubts based upon the mere fact of a 

 specimen being unique." 



