162 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
It is therefore of interest to record the discovery of a fragment of the 
maxilla with two milk teeth of a bison at Orleans, on Cape Cod, Mass- 
achusetts. It is exceedingly fortunate that this discovery was made by 
a professional geologist. Dr. A. W. Grabau, whose manuscript note 
made at the time, now some twenty years ago, accompanies the speci- 
men. From this it appears that the specimen was discovered wholly 
embedded in till about halfway up on a section of a glacial moraine, 
situated on Town Cove, and about seventy or eighty feet high. The 
moraine consisted of ‘Till with boulders much rain worn.^^ Associated 
with the specimen in the till were many fragments of the marine mollusk 
Venus. Doctor Grabau has presented the specimen to the Boston 
Society of Natural History in whose collection it has since remained. 
It was brought to my notice during a recent revision of the Society’s 
Pleistocene fossils and was still largely embedded in glacial sand. On 
carefully cleaning this away, the teeth were seen to be the second and 
third milk molars dp^) of the left side, quite unworn and perfectly 
preserved, while fragments of an unerupted first permanent molar 
were also disclosed. 
The manner of its occurrence suggests that the bison caK from which 
the fragment came had either met its end while wandering on the mo- 
raine during the formation process or more likely had lived during a 
previous interglacial stage and its scattered bones had been scraped up 
by a succeeding glacier during the time of the last or Wisconsin ice- 
sheet. That the teeth are wholly unbroken indicates that they suf- 
fered little from rolling or crushing. Presumably, the animal from 
which they came must have lived in the so-called Peorian interglacial 
stage just preceding the last advance of the ice-sheet. 
From extensive researches on the mammals of the North American Pleis- 
tocene, Dr. 0. P. Hay (Smithson. Misc. Coll., 1912, vol. 59, no. 20, p. 13) 
concludes that of the several species of Bison known to have existed 
in America, all “except Bison bison had become extinct before the 
Wisconsin ice-sheet had retired from its southernmost limit.” In view 
of this conclusion and of the precise agreement of the specimen here 
recorded, with the corresponding teeth of Bison bison, I have referred 
it to the latter species. The occurrence of a bison in eastern Massa- 
chusetts in the latter Pleistocene times not only indicates a former 
range much farther to the eastward of its known limits within the 
historic period, but presupposes as well a certain amount of open grass- 
lands. It was perchance an inhabitant of the ancient coastal-plain 
area, relics of whose fauna and flora are still preserved in isolated col- 
onies along the New England and adjacent coasts. 
