214 
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 
The marl being tenacious, great care was requisite to extricate the fossils. 
With a small trowel and a knife, the bones were carefully dissected from their 
bed, and from one another. A sketch was made of their position, and some 
measurements were taken of them, in anticipation of the contingency of their 
fracture in the attempt to remove them. Several lines of transverse fracture 
were observable before their position was changed. Each bone was separately 
transferred to a board, and thus carried from the pit, and then wrapped in a 
piece of coarse cloth. Thus enveloped it was laid upon a thick bed of straw 
in the bottom of a cart ; and the whole were safely transported in this way, 
about three quarters of a mile, to Mr. Foulke's residence. A small tooth and 
some fragments of a jaw were found with the other specimens. 
Mr. Isaac Lea and Dr. Leidy were informed of the discovery, and they 
promptly visited the excavation. Their opinion of the scientific value of the 
fossils justified further exploration; and the diggers were kept at work, from 
time to time as the weather permitted, during the month of October. 
Another tooth having been accidentally turned up by Mr. Foulke near the sur- 
face of the marl which had been thrown out, the entire mass was broken up 
and carefully raked over ; and by this process, in two or three days, the number 
of teeth increased to nine, and some useful fragments of jaw were also added 
to the collection. 
Various specimens of shells were obtained ; but their extreme friability ren- 
dered their preservation difficult. Several pieces of wood were found. The ex- 
cavation was carried quite around the old pit, and extended so as to form a con- 
siderable area for search ; but nothing further appeared, except a few vertebrae, 
and small fragments of other bones, and of wood, near the margin of the old 
pit. It seemed then useless to proceed, and the diggers were dismissed. 
One of the workmen, having become interested in the search, kept his atten- 
tion upon the subject ; and about a week afterward found, in the green marl 
near the White Horse tavern (about six miles southward from Haddonfield), some 
vertebrae, parts of long bones, and several teeth of a crocodile, believed to be of 
a species not heretofore found in New Jersey ; which are now in Dr. Leidy's hands 
for final examination. The workman stated that, at the bottom of all the dig- 
gings, casts of cucullea are found in great quantity. They are known at the pits 
by the name of "squirrel heads," from a fancied resemblance. Two specimens 
accompany the crocodile bones just mentioned. 
Subsequently, Drs. Leidy and LeConte and Mr. Foulke made a short tour 
among green marl pits, worked for sale of marl, southward of Haddonfield. On 
the road to the White Horse, they visited the large opening of Mr. Alexander 
Cooper, who stated that he knew of no bones being found there — certainly none 
during thirty years. Near the White Horse, it was said that bones had been 
thrown from all the diggings. At the extensive pit of Mr. Randall Morgan, on 
a south branch of Timber Creek, a short distance southward from Blackwood- 
town, a curious specimen of conglomerate of terebratulae and other shells was 
obtained. Bones had been recently found ; but they had been thrown away, 
and were lost, ^rom Mr. Charles Stevenson, in the same neighborhood, it was 
learned that in his pit, and that of Mr. Marshall, below Mr. Morgan's, bones had 
been repeatedly found, but no care was taken of them. In fact, within the last 
year Mr. Stevenson had thrown some portions into the yard between his house 
and barn. After a little raking, a few crocodile bones were discovered amongst 
leaves and dirt. Mr. King, a blacksmith at Blackwoodtown, was said to have 
collected a few bones as curiosities. Upon application being made to him, he 
stated that he had given, or loaned, or lost, nearly all of his stock ; but he pro- 
duced from the corner of his workshop, three specimens which Dr. Leidy imme- 
diately recognised as fragments of jaw of Mosasaurus, each containing a large 
portion of a tooth ; the three exhibiting very clearly the mode of dentition of 
the animal. 
These details were presented to the notice of the members, because they sugges- 
ted the probability that valuable illustrations of palaeontology and geology are 
annually lost through the ignorance of marl diggers or the inattention of own- 
[Dec. 
