There is an account of this discovery in F. E. Stevens’s “History of Lee County, Illinois,” 1914, page 527.
6. Woodhull, Henry County.—In the Galesburg, Illinois, Register of May 14, 1911, appeared an account of the finding of three large molars and some bones of a supposed mastodon in a clay of a brick and tile factory at Woodhull.
Professor Page L. Baker, superintendent of schools in Woodhull, states that first a part, 6 feet 10 inches long, of a tusk was found, 9 inches in circumference at the base, 6 inches at the other end. Some scattered bony plates supposed to belong to the skull were observed, but no limb-bones were found. Five teeth were secured, varying in weight from 6 to 16 pounds; one had 20 enamel plates, and there were 6 of these plates in a 100–mm. line. It can hardly be doubted that the species represented was Elephas columbi.
Professor Baker stated that the pit was about 14 feet deep, the upper 2 feet consisting of prairie soil, possibly loess. Below this is 10 feet of red clay, and then about 2 feet of white clay, resting on a layer of muck. The bones were in the white clay, but resting on the muck. The teeth were wholly in the white clay. The tusk was removed about 15 feet from the teeth. This region is covered by Illinois drift, overlain by loess, sometimes of considerable thickness. It does not appear from the depth and character of the deposits that the Illinoian drift had been penetrated. The muck-bed belongs probably to the Sangamon stage, possibly to the Iowan. The reader is referred to the geological sections found at Galva, about 18 miles further east (see p. [142]).
MARYLAND.
(Map [12].)
1. Oxford Neck, Talbot County.—In 1869 (Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. XI, p. 178), Cope wrote that there had been found on the farm of Lambert Kirby, in Oxford Neck, a molar tooth resembling that of a half-grown Elephas primigenius or E. columbi. Besides this tooth were remains of what Cope called Elephas americanus Leidy. These, it is supposed, belonged to Elephas primigenius. The collection referred to had been placed in the cabinet of the Baltimore Academy of Sciences; but the writer has not seen it. Lucas (Maryland Geol. Surv., Pliocene and Pleistocene, 1906, p. 167) describes the teeth from this locality. He identified one small tooth as belonging certainly to E. columbi, and a large one as probably belonging to the same species.
2. Queen Anne County.—In 1820, Horace H. Hayden (Geolog. Essays, p. 121) wrote that he had an enormous grinder of the Asiatic elephant, dug up in the county named, on the plantation of Mr. Carmichael. It was said to have been enveloped in a stiff blue clay.
Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (Cuvier’s “Theory of the Earth,” 1818, p. 394, plate I, figs. 3, 5) mentions and figures the tooth, apparently that of Elephas columbi. It is said to have been dug out of the ground by the side of a marsh. It was the last upper molar of probably the right side.