FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
63 
Cervus, Ursus, Tapir us , &c. “ in a tenacious blue clay which under¬ 
lies the diluvial drift.”* The precise determination of the geological 
age of the deposit in this instance, is of the very highest importance, 
since, at a depth of about two feet below the skeletons of Megalonyx 
and other extinct genera, it yielded, according to Dr. Dickeson, the 
greater part of an Os innominatum , which was identified as being of 
an adolescent human subject, and which proved to be strictly in the 
same fossil state as regards colour, density, and mineral condition, as 
the bones of Megalonyx and the other associated animals. Had both 
the asserted facts been satisfactorily established, the antiquity of 
the human race would have been carried back in America to a 
period, infinitely more remote than has anywhere as yet been claimed 
for it, through recent investigations, in Europe. But the term 4 dilu¬ 
vial drift 5 appears to have been used, in this instance, in the vague 
comprehensive sense in which it was generally applied by geologists, 
before the labours of Prestwich, Godwin-Austen, and other observers, 
had discriminated the relations of the true 4 glacial drift’ from those 
of the Talley Gravels and Loess deposits. I am informed by Sir Charles 
Lyell, that the bed of material overlying the ‘ blue clay 5 at Natchez, 
is of the nature of a Loess or Lehm deposit, and that the clay itself is 
probably of a more modem date than the 4 true drift.’ A shade of 
suspicion has been east on the identification of the fossil itself, as 
having been derived from a human subject, by a remark made by 
Dr. Leidy, who has examined and identified the associated remains.| 
Other instances have been appealed to, in proof of the Probiscidian 
and Edentate fauna having preceded the ‘ drift 5 in the United 
States; but in no case as yet, has the evidence been as conclusive as 
it can be shown to be, with regard to the Mammoth in Europe. 
§ 5. Synonymy of American Eossil Elephants. 
The Elephant molars, occurring so abundantly along with Masto¬ 
don Ohiotieus in the United States, have, since the time of Cuvier, 
been almost universally referred to TJ. primigenim. But an impres¬ 
sion existed among palaeontologists in America that there might be 
distinct species. Dr. Warren, in 1855, expresses it thus: “ We still 
“ remain without any decisive fact calculated to determine whether 
“ the American varieties differ specifically from the European, and 
“ whether these varieties differ specifically from each other.” J In 1852, 
* Proceed. Acad. Nat. Scien. Philadelph. 1846, Yol. iii. p. 107, and Leidy, 
op. cit. p. 6, 
t “ With these specimens, and presenting the same general appearance of colour, 
“ compactness, &c., was discovered the so-called fossil human innominate bone.” 
(Leidy, ‘ Extinct Sloth Tribe,’ p. 6.) The authenticity of the specimen and of the 
identification is strongly maintained in Morton’s ‘ Types of Mankind,’ by Nott and 
Gliddon, p. 343. Sir Charles Lyell no longer doubts the authenticity of the bone 
as contemporaneous with the associated remains. 
f On ‘ Mastodon Giganteus,’ p. 161. Agassiz, at the Cambridge (U. S.) 
meeting of the American Assoc, for the Advancement of Science, 1849, described 
the molar and tusk of an Elephant, found in Vermont in digging the Rutland and 
