4. Vicksburg, Warren County.—In the U. S. National Museum (No. 344) is a fragment of an upper right last molar, said to have been found at Vicksburg. The fragment consists of the hindermost crest and the talon. In Wailles’s report on the geology of Mississippi, 1854, page 284, there is a statement to the effect that mastodon remains had been found in the deep cut of the railroad at Vicksburg.
5. Bovina?, Warren County.—In Wailles’s report, just cited, it is stated that mastodon bones had been found in the vicinity of Big Black River, near the eastern line of Warren County. While the statement is rather indefinite, the locality is probably somewhere in the region about Bovina, on the railway from Vicksburg to Jackson.
6. Claiborne County.—According to Dr. Leidy (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1859, p. 111), portions of jaws with teeth of mastodons have been found in this county, associated with a skull of a bear which he could not distinguish from that of Ursus americanus.
7. Jefferson County.—In Wailles’s report of 1854 (p. [284]), already cited, it is stated that remains of the mastodon had been found in this county, near the former town of Greenville. The writer has not been able to learn more exactly where this town was situated.
8. Natchez, Adams County.—The region about Natchez is a fertile one for remains of mastodons and various other fossil vertebrates. The first mention of the finding of fossils here appears to be a note by S. L. Mitchill in 1826 (Cat. Organ. Remains, p. 10), who presented two teeth to the Lyceum of Natural History, New York. G. Troost, in 1835 (Trans. Geol. Soc. Penn., vol. I, p. 143), stated that he had in his cabinet a tooth of a mastodon, found near Natchez.
In 1845 (Proc. 6th Meet. Assoc. Amer. Geologists and Naturalists, pp. 77–79), M. W. Dickeson read a paper on the geology of the Natchez bluffs, in which he mentioned the occurrence of mastodons.
In 1846 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1846, p. 106), the same writer exhibited at the Academy a large collection of fossil bones which had been made near Natchez. His account treats especially of the remains of Megalonyx jeffersonii and a human pelvis; but it is mentioned that the deposit abounds in bones and teeth of the mastodon. Dickeson stated that the stratum which contained these organic remains is a tenacious blue clay which underlies what he called the diluvial drift east of Natchez. This “drift” is now regarded as being mostly loess.
Lyell, in 1846 (Second Visit to U. S. N. A., ed. 2, vol. II, p. 195), wrote that mastodon remains had been found in the loam (loess) which contained land-shells at different depths.
Hilgard in 1860 (Geol. Agric. Mississippi, p. 196) gives a list, furnished by Dr. Leidy, of the mammalian fossils which had been found “in a solid blue clay said to belong to this formation” (the Bluff formation). Mastodons are said to be by far the most common. At Pine Ridge, 6 miles north of Natchez, in townships 7 and 8 north, range 3 west, mastodons and other mammals occurred at a depth of about 20 feet from the surface, in a ravine. The list referred to was quoted from Wailles’s report of 1854 (Agric. Geol. Mississippi, pp. 285, 286).
Leidy, in 1889 (Trans. Wagner Inst., vol. II, p. 9), in speaking of the occurrence of human remains at Natchez, referred to the occurrence of the mastodon at this place. McGee, in 1891 (12th Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Surv., pt. I, p. 399), in discussing the geological conditions at Natchez, stated that several nearly perfect skulls of the mastodon and at least one of the American elephant had been discovered at Natchez. His idea was that some of these remains had been found in the brown loam and some in the gravelly beds well down toward the Port Hudson clays.