-academy of sciences] ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 7 



American mastodon," which, his first published paper, appeared at Rochester in Moore's 

 "Rural New Yorker" for March, 1867. This essay is notable for its effective presentation 

 of good matter in a popular form, as the following extracts show: 



The recent discovery of the entire skeleton of a Mastodon at Cohoes, and the general interest felt by the 

 public in the matter, will perhaps warrant a brief description of this ancient denizen of our forests . . . The 

 large cavities in the front of the elephant's skull, that furnish a firm attachment for the muscles of the trunk, 

 are equally characteristic of the Mastodon, and must have been accompanied by a similar proboscis. In fact, 

 without this flexible nose that serves for hand and drinking cup alike, he must have perished, his projecting 

 tusks keeping him from browsing, and his short neck not enabling him to reach grass or water . . . Each 

 leg bone of the Mastodon is a little longer than the corresponding bone of the elephant, and is, in a greater 

 ratio, thicker. This is but one phase of a general law of nature, — that the small are proportionally stronger 

 than the large. The cricket leaps at one spring thirty times his own length, while the hippopotamus and ele- 

 phant are too unwieldy to do more than walk or trot. The ant carries in his teeth loads many times heavier 

 than his own bod}'; the black bear is related to have borne in his mouth a carcass of about his own weight; 

 the horse does not easily bear on his back more than half his weight; and the Mastodon required a dispropor- 

 tionate strength of limb to support his own huge body merely. Thus it appears that the latter approaches 

 the limit of size for terrestrial animals . . . The Creator has adapted the teeth of all animals to their food, 

 making them into chisels for the nut-piercing squirrel, hooks and knives for the flesh-devouring lion, shears 

 for the grass-cropping ox, needles for the insect-catching mole and bat, and mill-stones for the twig-eating 

 Mastodon . . . Lyell says that the cataract of Niagara has receded four miles at least since certain bones 

 were deposited on its bank, and it now wears back only a few inches in a year. The Cohoes skeleton, naturally 

 buried eighty-five feet under the earth, probably lay for still longer ages . . . 



As the Origin of Species had appeared but a few years before this essay was written, the 

 teleological philosophy of the next-to-last passage is not surprising. The reference to Niagara 

 in the last statement makes one wonder whether the writer recalled his early interest in that 

 subject when, in later years, he became its master. 



The Cohoes mastodon skeleton that was to be mounted at Albany had been found in a 

 huge pothole, measuring 40 by 70 feet across and over 60 feet in depth, near Cohoes Falls of the 

 Mohawk River, just above its junction with the Hudson a few miles north of Albany. The 

 work upon it was done under the direction of Prof. James Hall, whom, as director of the State 

 cabinet of natural history, Gilbert and his associate Howell, also from Rochester, thus had 

 advantageous opportunity of meeting. Hall took part in the excavation until he wrenched his 

 hip by a fall in the pothole; then the work was left in charge of Gilbert. The skeleton was 

 somewhat incomplete, and the missing parts had to be reconstructed; hence, as Hall wrote, 

 "after carefully making a list of the bones we possessed, with measurements of the more im- 

 portant ones" — a large part of this labor apparently falling on Gilbert — "the young men were 

 sent to Boston," in order to examine two more perfect mastodon skeletons there on exhibition; 

 one was in the Warren Museum, a private institution in that city founded by Dr. J. Collins 

 Warren ; 40 years later this specimen was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in 

 New York, where it is now preserved; the other was then in the anatomical collections formed 

 by Prof. Jeffries Wyman, of Harvard College, Cambridge, and is now in the Harvard University 

 Museum. According to Hall the young men during this visit met Louis Agassiz, Jeffries Wyman, 

 J. Mason Warren (son of the founder of the Warren Museum), and Theodore Lyman; but un- 

 happily there is little record of what these already established seniors and the then developing 

 juniors thought of one another. A brief note in Doctor Warren's diary for June 20, 1867, 

 merely records: 



Three young men, who came from Professor Hall of Albany and were introduced by Dr. Wyman, were 

 engaged a good part of the day in measuring the Mastodon, preparatory to putting up one at Albany, which 

 was found near Cohoe's Falls and which is imperfect, a number of the vertebrae, among other things, being 

 wanting. 



The mastodon was naturally more interesting to him than the three young men. No 

 entries were made in Wyman's diary for that summer, and Agassiz kept no diary. So the 

 past fades away. However, it is recalled that, as if in consequence of expertness gained in 

 mounting the mastodon, Gilbert was not long afterward engaged in restoring missing tails for 

 fossil Irish elks in the museums at Albany and Columbia University. Although he had few 



