Twenty-five members present.
Messrs. I. W. Raymond, Rodmond Gibbons, Thomas H. Selby, Daniel Knight, F. A. Holman, M. D., Edmund Scott, Henry Edwards, John Melville, George Daly, Robinson Gibbons, Gregory Yale, James Howden, George H. Fillmore, Marshall Hastings, John L. Eckley and Lee J. Ransom were elected Resident Members, and J. G. Cooper, M.D., a Life Member.
Donation to the Cabinet: A skull of a California Indian, taken from a burial place in Alameda County, near Centreville, by Mr. L. G. Yates.
Donation to the Library: The Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal for 1865 and 1866, by Dr. H. Gibbons.
Prof. W. P. Blake read the following communication:
Notice of Fossil Elephants’ Teeth from the Northwest Coast.
BY W. P. BLAKE.
The two molar teeth of the extinct elephant which I exhibit this evening were presented to me by Col. Bulkley, Superintendent of the American and Russian Telegraph. One is from the mouth of the Yukon River, and the other from St. Paul’s Island, near the middle of Behring’s Sea. The remains of elephants are abundant in both places. Tusks are sometimes found, and one has been sent by Col. Bulkley to the Smithsonian Institution. These new localities may be regarded as forming a connecting link between those of Siberia and America, and indicate the former continuous distribution of the ancient elephant upon the two continents.
The following list of localities, known to me, of similar fossils in California, will show that the elephant must have been frequently seen here in very early times: At Mare Island; in Placer County, near Forest Hill; in Tuolumne County, at Columbia, Shaw’s Flat, Texas Flat and near Sonora; in Calaveras County, at Knight’s Ferry; in Los Angeles County, at San Pedro. The last is, I believe, the most southern point at which such remains have been found in this State.
Mr. Falkenau read a paper on Peat, in which he gave an account of the origin, distribution and uses of this material. In the discussion which followed the reading of this communication, it was stated by Mr. Bolander that no valuable beds of peat had yet been discovered on this coast. Messrs. Keyes and Behr also commented on supposed discoveries of this material in California. The peculiar climate of this region was noticed as unfavorable to the development of this material.