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“ We insert the following letter, which has just been received from Dr. John¬ 
son, of Louisville, Kentucky, without further comment, at present, than merely 
observing that we place entire confidence in the author’s statements, whose obser¬ 
vations were made on the spot. Specimens of the substance in question have been 
placed in the cabinet of the Geological Society in Pennsylvania, and in the private 
collections of Messrs. Taylor, Harlan, and Wetherill. It is the intention of Mr. 
W. to analyze these grains, which appear, in some instances, to display, when 
fractured, a shining surface. Exposed to the blow-pipe, they are reduced to a fine 
white ash, and yield neither smoke nor flame. The grains represent the true In¬ 
dian variety of corn. 
“ Louisville , July, 1835. 
“My dear Sir ,—I now send you, by Mr. Frazer, th e fossilized corn of which 
I spoke when I last saw you. It is found in the alluvial bank of the Ohio River, 
about twenty-five miles below Wheeling, both above and below the mouth of Fish 
Creek, and extending up the creek some distance, and four or five miles on the 
Ohio ; it may extend farther, but it shews itself only that distance by the washing 
of the river against the bank. The stratum is generally from eight to ten inches 
thick, and from five to six feet below the surface, and contains nothing but the 
corn grains closely impacted together with the black dust which you perceive 
among the corn, filling up the interstices. No cob or stock of the corn has ever 
been found with the grains. The same stratum has been met with in places 
distant from this, in digging below the surface. This is all that I could 
learn relative to this unaccountable and interesting deposition. Why or how did 
the corn get from the cob ? It certainly must have been charred, or it would not 
have been thus preserved. It could not have been reduced to this black cinder, 
like the loaves of bread and grains, of different kinds, found at Pompeii, or rather 
it could not have resulted from a like cause. I do believe if all the corn raised 
on the Ohio, and all its tributaries above this point, were collected in one mass, it 
would not amount to one-tenth of this deposition. 
“ Most truly your’s, 
“ R. Harlan, M.D.” “ J. C. Johnson. 
There is a disposition in England to give credit to our fellow labourers in 
America for occasionally making “ mountains of mole-hills ” in their investigation 
of natural phenomena. This credulity on our part is certainly not without foun¬ 
dation, and until we are fully satisfied that the causes in which it has originated 
no longer exist, all relations emanating from the new world which border upon 
the marvellous will be received here with some degree of scepticism, unless sup¬ 
ported by evidence of a most explicit and unexceptionable character. As an illus¬ 
tration of the very limited insight into some branches of natural science which 
its cultivators possessed on that continent, even within a comparatively recent pe¬ 
riod, we would refer our readers to a catalogue published a few years since, of the 
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