2. _Skidaway Island, near Savannah, Chatham County._—The earliest announcement of the discovery of _Megatherium_ in North America was made by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill in 1824 (Ann. Lyc. Nat. Hist. N. Y., vol. I, pp. 58–61, plate VI). The announcement was based on a number of teeth which had been sent to him from Skidaway Island. In the same volume, on pages 114 to 124, plate VIII, William Cooper described teeth and bones which had been sent to him from the same locality by Joseph E. Habersham. Cooper had some reason to conclude that all the bones and teeth found up to that time had come from the same individual. In 1828 (Annals cited, vol. II, pp. 267–270) Cooper described additional materials which he had received from Skidaway Island.
In 1846 (Hodgson’s Mem. Megath., p. 25), Habersham gave a list of the fossil bones and teeth found at the island mentioned. Lyell (op. cit., p. 313) gave a brief account of a visit to Skidaway Island and stated that _Megatherium_, _Mylodon_, _Mastodon_, _Elephas primigenius_, and a species of the ox tribe had been found there. In 1855 (Smithson. Contrib. Knowl., vol. VII, art. 5, p. 50) Leidy enumerated the specimens of _Megatherium_ which had been found at Skidaway Island, and he gave an excellent figure (plate xv) of a ramus of the lower jaw containing all its teeth, which had been sent to the National Institute at Washington. These bones ought to be now in the National Museum, but the writer has not been able to find them. They may never have been transferred and may be lost. On the other hand, Leidy did not mention other specimens from Skidaway Island, given by Scriven, and now in the National Museum. One of these is the hinder part of a skull figured in Hodgson’s memoir. Also, the same plate contains what is almost certainly the astragalus; its greatest diameter is 9 inches. Furthermore, there is present the distal end of a right humerus presented by Doctor Scriven. It is probably one of the two mentioned on page 27 of Hodgson’s memoir. As in the one there measured, the distance across the condyles is 14 inches and that across the articular surfaces is 7.75 inches. The Scriven collection also contains several teeth and fragments of others. A piece of the maxilla bears the small hindermost upper molar, no doubt the fragment mentioned by Habersham in his memorandum, page 26. Many of the bones sent from the island show by the presence of barnacles and bryozoa that at one time they lay in salt water; but this was probably not long before they were discovered.