1. _Sable Island._—In the collection of the Philadelphia Academy there is a walrus skull which was sent to the Academy from Sable Island about 1871. According to Rhoads (Proc. Phila. Acad., 1898, p. 197), Leidy regarded this skull as that of a recent individual; but Rhoads states that “the specimen is of precisely the same nature in color, texture, and specific gravity as the larger fossil specimen which Leidy described and figured in the Philosophical Transactions and which came from the beach at Long Branch, New Jersey.” He thinks that it had been derived from an ancient raised sea-beach. This does not appear to be at all improbable.
2. _Fairville, Charlotte County._—In 1879 (Geol. Surv. Canada, Rep. for 1877–8, EE, p. 23), Dr. G. F. Matthew reported the discovery of a skeleton of _Phoca grœnlandica_ near Fairville, at the mouth of St. John River, New Brunswick. The fore limbs and several vertebræ were missing. The skeleton was afterwards destroyed in a fire at St. John. The bones were found at a depth of about 25 feet, in the lower Leda clay.
3. _Bic, Rimouski County._—In Le Naturaliste Canadien (vol. XXXVI, 1908, p. 51), the editor, V. A. Huard, in commenting on a letter written to him and announcing the capture of a walrus somewhere on the northern coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, recalled an article contributed in 1869 by the former editor, a priest named Provancher (Le Naturaliste Canad., vol. II, p. 19). This writer stated that some workmen employed in the construction of the International Railway had discovered at Bic, Rimouski County, Quebec, on the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, a complete skeleton of a walrus. This skeleton had a length of 13 feet. It was found at a depth of 14 feet, in a compact clay, and at a height of more than 100 feet above sea-level. The skeleton was deposited in the museum of the Rimouski Seminary, but was destroyed in a fire in 1881.
It is evident that when that animal died and was buried in the clay the land in that region stood at a level at least 100 feet lower than at present.
Through the late Mr. L. M. Lambe, of the Canada Geological Survey, the writer has received from Mr. W. A. Johnston, who made a special study of the Pleistocene, information regarding the age of the clays at Bic. He says that little can be said definitely regarding the age of the clays in which the walrus skeleton was found. Clays belonging to the Champlain submergence stand now at an elevation of 311 feet in that vicinity; and marine shells occur in clays, supposed to belong to the Champlain, at an altitude of 120 feet. There is a possibility that some of the clays in that region are earlier than the time of the Wisconsin. Mr. Johnston cites Guide Book No. 1, part I, pp. 77–78, of the Canada Survey, and Dawson’s Ice Age, 1893, pp. 186–195. The first article was written by J. W. Goldthwait. On page 921 of Logan’s Geology of Canada, 1863, it is stated that bones of whales and of the morse have been found partially embedded in the Leda clay in several places between Bic and Matanne, about 60 miles farther down the river.