Alabama state intelligencer., 1831-06-25
Fro.n the New-York American.

The following remarks upon very inter- esting portion of Natural History, will, it is hoped, prove very acceptable to many of your readers.
 A committee, from that most mertorious institution, the Lyceum, has Informed us, that a large collection of fossil bones have been brought to this city from -Bone-Lick, in Kentucky. These bones which are exhibit ed at the corner of Broadway and Pearl l-street, have seen, and can safely recommend to the attention of the curious. They consist of part of the remains of five or six mastodons at the least. Ofthese, the head of one is more per feet than any hitherto discovered. But min gled with the remains of these mastodons, there are the bones of an extinct species of OK, of the gigantic sloth, (the megalonyx of MT Jefferson, of the Horse and of the .asia tic elehhant. As these bones were found in the same deposit, we must admit that the ani- mals to which they belonged, appertained to the same epoch. And when was that epoch? It must have been, think, subsequent to the flood, and sntecedent to the discovery of this continent by the Europeans, and was proba- bly, nearer the latter than the former event. Thotth the remains are post diluvian, conclude for the following reasons. First, they are not at all impregnated with silicious matter, but retain their animal substance. Secondly, nearly entire skeletons have been found in the situations in which the animals appear to have pershed Thirdly, neither they nor the soil in which they were imbedded, often not deep, have suffered any violence. Now this island gives sufficient evidence of the fury of the flood. Mounds of sand, gravel, &c. have been thrown up sixty or seventy feet m height and then capped with boulders of many tons weight, brought twenty or thirty miles from the other side of the North River. Where the rocks of the island were laid bare, and were too firmly fixed to be moved, and snfii- ciently broad to receive the impression, their surfaces bear testimony to the violent attrtion to which they have been subjected. No per son can imagine that when this continent was swept by such torrent from north to south, that the Kicks would remain the undisturbed resort of animals in search of salt--as then the mastodons and their contemporaries must have survived the flood, what could have de- stroyed them? and why should the horse and | the elephant have been sustained elsewhere, though in America they have all perished? The mastodon at one time appears to have been very numerous. Bones belonging to this animal have been found not only OH this con tnent, but in immense quantities in Siberia, and also in the kingdom of Ava, in the East
 Indies; yet there is no account on record oi any living specimen having ever been seen.-
 The horse and the elephant, one would think,
 were as capable of preserving their races a:
 the deer; yet the latter have survived the ca
 tastrophe, whatever it was, that proved fata
 to the former on our continent. But that Ca
 tastrophe did not probably precede by man,
 centuries the arrival of our ancestors in thi
 western world. In coming to this opinion, Hay no stress upon the traditions of the In dians, mentioned,by Mir Jefferson, rely up
 on the bones themselves, which have ever,
 appearance of being comparatively recent