George N. Stone (Monogr. XXXIV, U. S. Geol. Surv., pp. 286–291) has discussed the age of the glacial deposits at Portland. Professor M. L. Fuller has written to the author that on the Maine coast the chief clay is known as the Leda and is found at Portland and Gardiner, and that it probably antedates the Wisconsin. This is not to be correlated with the Leda clay of the St. Lawrence Valley. It corresponds rather to Clapp’s “high-level clays” (Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., vol. XVIII, p. 505, seq.).
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
11. Jeffries Reef, off Portsmouth.—The specimen from this place consists of the greater part of the left side of the skull of a large individual. The occipital and the exoccipitals are missing. The bone and especially the tusk have suffered some decay. The fragment is labeled as having been dredged from a depth of 50 to 75 fathoms on Eastern Jeffries Reef. The bottom was hard. Jeffries Reef lies 5 or more miles off the southernmost part of the Maine coast and extends from the Isle of Shoals to Boon Island. The skull belonged to an old individual. The length from the rear of the mastoid process to the front of the premaxilla is 360 mm. The exserted part of the tusk measures 225 mm. in length. At its base the diameters are 65 mm. and 42 mm. There are 4 large grinding teeth. There is no reason for supposing that the species represented is not O. rosmarus.
MASSACHUSETTS.
12. Gay Head, Martha’s Vineyard.—In his “Travels in North America,” volume I, 1845, page 257, plate V, figure 1, Lyell announced the finding of a part of a skull of a walrus at Gay Head. This he had purchased from a fisherman who lived there and who said it had fallen out of a conglomerate found at that place and which contains bones of cetaceans. The skull retained but a small portion of its animal matter. Richard Owen, to whom the skull was shown, regarded it as belonging to a species distinct from O. rosmarus. The upper jaw contained the base of one tusk, the socket for the other, and 3 molar teeth on each side. The reduced number of molars furnishes no distinctive character, for existing individuals sometimes present this number. The base of the tusk has its transverse diameter greater than usual relatively to the fore-and-aft diameter. According to Lyell’s illustration of the specimen, the greater diameter was 70 mm., the shorter 53 mm. The writer has seen no tusk of O. rosmarus as thick as this; but the thickness is variable and may possibly attain to two-thirds of the greater diameter.
Inasmuch as the Tertiary deposits at Gay Head, rising above the sea to a height of about 150 feet, are capped by a sheet of glacial drift and clays, it is probable that the skull in question had fallen from some of these drift deposits. According to Professor J. B. Woodworth (17th Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv., pt. I, p. 982), there are at Gay Head deposits of drift which represent some of the older glacial stages as well as the last one, the Wisconsin. It is possible, therefore, that this walrus lived there as far back as the middle of the glacial epoch or even earlier. For additional information on the geology of that island consult Woodworth’s paper, in which the literature is cited; also the important paper by N. S. Shaler (7th Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv., 1888, pp. 303–363.)
The hooded seal, Cystophora cristata, has probably been found fossil at Gay Head. The only reason for this supposition is found in a statement made by Charles Lyell (Proc. Geol. Soc. London, vol. IV, p. 32; Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLVI, 1844, p. 319). He says that with other remains on Martha’s Vineyard he found a tooth having the crown fractured. Lyell submitted the tooth to Richard Owen, who pronounced it to be that of a seal which seemed to be nearly allied to the modern Cystophora proboscidea (C. cristata). It seems quite probable that this species lived there at the time when the walrus haunted the region. It is of course possible that the remains reported belonged to an animal that lived in that region as far back as the Miocene. The tooth was not described or figured.
NEW JERSEY.
13. Long Branch.—Portions of several walrus skulls have been found on the beach at Long Branch. Two of these were described and figured by Leidy in 1867 (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., vol. XI, p. 83, plate IV, figs. 1, 2, plate V, fig. 1). One skull, lacking the lower jaw, some of the right hinder part of the cranium, and the exserted portion of one tusk, was discovered in 1853. The other specimen, discovered about 1856, furnished the front of the skull as far back as the middle of the palate. Both belonged to old individuals. Leidy concluded that the animals which had possessed these skulls belonged to the existing species Odobenus rosmarus. He surmised that they had been floated to the New Jersey coast on fields of ice or perhaps had lived there during the Glacial period. The skull which was found in 1853 is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Academy; the other is in the collection of the New Jersey Geological Survey. Recently, Mr. Samuel N. Rhoads has studied these skulls. He had also for examination the skull from Sable Island, which has been mentioned. He concluded that these skulls belonged to a species distinct from O. rosmarus and which might bear DeKay’s name, O. virginianus.
It does not appear to the present writer that Rhoads has successfully maintained his proposition. He did not have at hand a sufficient number of skulls of the existing Atlantic walrus to present all the variations that occur in that species. Of course, the number of fossil specimens was very limited. In discussing Rhoads’s conclusion, it will be of advantage to consider a part of a skull which belongs to the Marsh collection in Yale University. This specimen consists of the anterior half of the skull, without the tusks and without the other teeth. It was found at Kitty Hawk, at the mouth of Albemarle Sound, just north of latitude 36°. It is thoroughly fossilized; and, having been found so far south, it may be safely regarded as having belonged to the species which inhabited the New Jersey coast during the Pleistocene.