GEOLOGY. 567 



shape and the place where it was discovered ; but after- 

 wards, as its teeth were found to be provided with strong 

 projecting elevations, a separate genus was formed for it. 



Although of such vast size, the remains of this species are 

 extremely common in Canada and Louisiana. Along the 

 river of the Great Osages are found skeletons almost com- 

 plete. Sometimes mastodons have been exhumed entire 

 and standing upright, in places where they seem to have 

 been caught alive ; some appear to have been so suddenly 

 overtaken by the alluvial floods that we still find in their 

 stomachs the food which they had just swallowed. The 

 nature of this food has been made out : it consisted of herbs 

 and small branches of trees ; and thus science has again 

 shown on what one of the most ancient creatures of the 

 globe used to feed ! 



Towards the same time we find the Glyptodons, huge 

 armadilloes, which were more than double the size of those 

 living in our days ; and then the Megatheria, a kind of 

 monstrous sloths, which were as large as elephants, while 

 those of our epoch are scarcely the size of a dog. 



Lastly came the frightful Sivatherium, found in India, 

 and to which this name, derived from that of the god Siva, 

 worshipped there, has been given in consequence. This 

 animal, as Owen tells us, is certainly one of the most gigan- 

 tic and extraordinary of the extinct races known to us. It 

 was a stag as large as an elephant, its head being sur- 

 mounted with four horns. 



In the tertiary epoch we meet with few reptiles, but one 

 of them enjoys a great celebrity. It was a gigantic sala- 

 mander, which the dictum of a theological naturalist caused 



