NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 315 
filled up with a great thickness of drift, through which the creek 
has cut here and there down to or into the solid rock. At the 
mastodon locality the stream met with a little knob of Chemung 
rocks which appears to have formed at one time an island, but the 
creek afterward cut its way through the rock to a lower level on 
the left side and the channel on the opposite side was deserted. 
Springs, one of which is said to be salt, have kept this deserted 
channel wet and a bed of peat has formed which once supported 
some large trees. The layer of peat varies from a few inches to 
two feet or more and is full of sticks, pine knots, bark, etc., more 
or less decayed. Beneath this is a layer of variable thickness, 
rarely more than a few inches, composed of clay mixed with peb- 
es and pieces of shale. In this were found small fragments of 
bones and teeth, the former in a very decayed condition showing 
that the skeleton had been completely broken up and scattered. 
The whole rests on a bed of blue arenaceous clay with large peb- 
bles and fragments of rock of all kinds, in fact, a modified drift. 
In most cases the bones were merely scattered over the surface of 
this bed between it and the peat. The teeth are in very good 
condition and not at all waterworn. The animal probably became 
mired near the spot. The skeleton, exposed to the action of the 
elements, went to pieces, and the fragments were scattered, partly 
by water action and partly through the agency of wild animals.— 
Cu. FreD. Harrr, Cornell University, May 25th, 1871. 
Tue Discovery or A SKULL OF A Musk-ox ry Utan.— The skull 
referred to in the “Salt Lake Tribune” this morning, is quite dif- 
ferent from the skull of a buffalo. The long, heavy, drooping horns 
mark it as the skull of a musk-ox—an animal now found only 
within, or near, the arctic regions. It is an exceedingly interest- 
ing relic to the geologist as an aid in reading the ancient history 
- of this valley. The skull, which is in a good state of preservation, 
was imbedded about eight feet below the surface in a layer of 
coarse, stratified gravel, with layers of sand and finer gravel above 
and below it. 
Much of the work of filling the valley had been accomplished be- 
fore this relic was deposited, but it found its resting place long 
before the work was completed, and long before Salt Lake wore 
water lines in the mountains above the “benches.” Musk-oxen 
and the foot-prints of glaciers left on the quartz rocks of some of 
these canyons, suggest a former climate quite unlike that which 
