Mr. C. C. Martin, of Geneseo, Illinois, county surveyor of Henry County, has informed the writer that Penny’s Slough is located in sections 17, 18, 19, and 20 of township 18 north, range 3 east, in the northern part of the county and on Rock River. On Leverett’s glacial map of this region (Monogr. U. S. Geol. Surv., XXXVIII, plate VI) the area is indicated as being occupied by sand and gravel plains and terraces of Wisconsin age. It seems most probable that this elephant lived when the Wisconsin glacier was not far away. However, there is a variety of Pleistocene formations in that region and the elephant in question may belong to the Iowan or to the Illinoian glacial stage.
5. Kendall County.—In the collection of the National Museum is a plaster cast made from a tooth of Elephas primigenius, found somewhere in Kendall County, but the present location of the original tooth is not known. It had a length of 280 mm. along the base. There appears to have been 20 plates, 8 in a 100–mm. line. The tooth seems to have resembled greatly one of E. primigenius which was brought from Alaska.
Kendall County is mostly occupied by moraines formed during the Wisconsin stage of the Pleistocene, especially moraines which were built up just before the retirement of the ice into the basin of Lake Michigan. Probably the elephant which possessed the tooth lived during the latter part of the Wisconsin stage.
WISCONSIN.
(Map [11].)
1. Milwaukee.—In the Public Museum of Milwaukee are considerable parts of a mammoth skeleton (No. 5351) found within the limits of the city. These were secured in May 1898, in excavating for a sewer along Cold Spring avenue and between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets. On learning of the discovery, Mr. George B. Turner, then taxidermist of the Milwaukee Public Museum, afterwards chief taxidermist in the U. S. National Museum, took charge of the excavations for the skeleton. He furnished the writer with an account of his work, giving a list of the bones, a plan of the area excavated, and a section of the deposits passed through. A description of the remains is given below:
| Feet. | Inches. | |
|---|---|---|
| Filled-in materials | 4 | 0 |
| Clay and peat, mixed | 1 | 0 |
| Peat | 1 | 3 |
| Peat and clay, mixed | 1 | 0 |
| Peat, clay, and shells | 1 | 0 |
| Clear blue clay with the elephant bones at the bottom | 4 | 6 |
| Gravel and cobblestones | undetermined. | |
As indicated in Turner’s sketch, the surface of the gravel and stones sloped downward toward the north.
It will be seen that the bones were buried about 9 or 10 feet below the natural surface of the ground. The head of the elephant was directed toward the east, the hinder end toward the west. The parts found were within a distance of 10 feet from east to west. Later the excavations on each side of the sewer were extended eastward, as shown on the plan, in an effort to find the skull, but without success, and iron rods 10 feet long, in two sections, were driven their full length horizontally everywhere around the excavation in the hope of recovering the skull.
For some time after the finding of these bones the theory prevailed that they had belonged to an elephant of one of the circuses which had made use of the ground near there. The fact that the lower jaw was found, but not the upper jaw and the brain-case, and only a part of the vertebræ and a part of the foot-bones, is sufficient to dispose of this theory. Also, some of the bones lack the epiphyses. Besides this, the elephant was neither the African nor the Asiatic species. It is evident that the animal after dying had lain on the surface for some time, so that the bones were somewhat scattered, perhaps by wolves or waves, and some were injured by exposure to the weather.