1o 
16. Vertebral joint and two teeth of a fossil animal, 
conjectured to have been a sea serpent, or an astonishing 
shark; discovered by digging for a plantation-improve- 
ment in the ground adjoining Meherrin River, at Murfrees- 
borough, North Carolina. They were brought by Captain 
Neville, who, with Dr. Forster, measured the joints of the 
vertebral column, as they adjusted them from their dispers- 
ed situation where the laborers had thrown them about. 
By putting the joints of the back-bone in a row, they mea- 
sured thirty-four feet; and by adding a reasonable allow- 
ance for the head and tail, the creature must have been at 
least forty feet long. The bones and teeth lay in a stratum 
of water-worn pebbles and sand, situated about twenty feet 
above tide-water, and mingled with an abundance of large 
oyster and cockle-shells. The distance from the ocean at 
Currituck, the nearest point, is about 70 miles. The bone 
of the back weighs twelve pounds and a half. The teeth, 
which are three-sided, with a base of four inches and a half, 
connected with sides of six inches, weigh sixteen ounces 
each. It has been supposed by some zoologists and geolo- 
gists, that these uncommon relics indicate a connexion 
really with the hydrophis, plature, enhydros, laticauda, or 
some other snake of the ocean, rather than with the squalus, 
or any other cartilaginous fish. 
(a) Fossil jaw and teeth; the teeth growing out of the 
jaw, as in the fossil crocodile of New-Jersey. From Salis- 
»bury, N.C.: with a recent specimen of the like, found on 
the shore of Lake Huron. (See Shelf II., No. 7.) 
17. Four enormous oyster-shells, from the rock of Lis- 
bon.—Captain Riddell. 
18. Two molded es epic from. Kentucky. —M. 
Beattie. 
19. Very singular fossil echinus ; figured and described 
in Med. Repos. vol..ii. p. 416. Georgia.—D. Meriwether. 
20. Elegant favosite, with some of the cells empty, and 
the others filled. Near the mouth of the river Iilinois.— 
Major Long. 
