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. In his discussion of the loess at Natchez, Shimek, in 1904 (Bull. Labs. Nat. Hist., Univ. Iowa, p. 305), expressed doubt about the occurrence of mastodons and other vertebrates in the loess.