FAMILY ELEPHANTID.*:. 103 



distinct from the Elephant, but allied to it in bulk, habits and other particulars. Since that 

 time, numerous species have been described in various parts of the world. 



In this country, there is scarcely a State east and south of the Hudson river, which has not 

 afforded specimens of the Mastodon. Along the Atlantic coast, few remains have been found 

 east of that river. The chief localities we have noted were at Cheshire, Connecticut, thirteen 

 miles north of New-Haven, in diluvial gravel (Am. Jour. Vol. 14, p. 187) ; and at Berlin and 

 Sharon in the same State (Id. Vol. 27, p. 166). We are not aware that any have been found 

 in the more northerly States, although, on the western coast of America, they have been found 

 in the latitude of 66° north. 



In this State, the remains of this animal were discovered near Claverack, as early as 1705, 

 and formed the subject of a note from the celebrated Dr. Mather, which appeared in the 

 English Philosophical Transactions, 1705, July 23 : " There is a prodigious tooth brought 

 " here, supposed to be the tooth of a man, from the shape. It weighs 4f lbs. It was dug 

 " up on the side of a hill, thirty or forty feet under ground, near a place called Claverack, 

 " about thirty miles this side of Albany. It is looked upon here as a mighty wonder whether the 

 " tooth be of man or beast. Other bones were dug up, which crumbled away upon exposure 

 " to air. They say one of them, which is thought to be a thigh bone, was seventeen feet long." 

 (Dunlap, Hist. N. York, Vol. 2, appendix, p. 154.) 



In 1782, they were found in a swamp near Montgomery, Orange county, and in greater 

 numbers at Shawangunk, Ulster county. Shortly after, portions of eight distinct individuals 

 were discovered within eight or ten miles of Montgomery. In 1801, Mr. Peale succeeded in 

 disinterring, from this region, an almost entire skeleton. 



Since that period, other localities have been discovered, the most remarkable of these are, 



1. From Rockland county, in 1817 ; and from Chester, Orange county, of which numerous 

 specimens are in the Cabinet of the Lyceum. A full account of the exploration connected 

 with these bones may be found in the American Edition of Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 

 before referred to. 



2. In the same year, remains were found in the city of Rochester, four feet below the sur- 

 face, in a hollow or water course. 



3. In 1823, more than one-half of a lower jaw, with the teeth, on the shore of Long-Island, 

 between high and low water mark, about four miles east of the county court-house at River- 

 head, Suffolk county. It is now in the Cabinet of the Lyceum of Natural History, New- 

 York. It may be noted that a very large molar, in Dr. Morton's collection, was fished up 

 from a similar locality, namely, in the ocean at Longbranch, New- Jersey. The bed of the 

 German ocean appears to be a rich locality for the bones not only of the mastodon, but also 

 of the elephant. In Loudon's Magazine for 1839, there is a figure and description of the 

 molar of a mastodon dredged from the Dogger Bank ; and Woodward, in his Geology of Nor- 

 folk, states that upwards of two thousand molars of the elephant (and probably of the masto- 

 don), had been dredged up by the fishermen of one little village (Hasbro'), in the space of 

 thirteen years. 



