some North American Mastodons. 147 



bones of the extremities are perfect, with the exception of some 

 of the terminal bones of the feet, and two or three of the inter- 

 mediate phalanges. Some of these missing bones were removed 

 with the mud and have been recovered ; others will probably be 

 found in the spring, after the sun has unbound the surface of the 

 earth. 



All the bones are solid, and ring on being struck with a hard 

 substance. Their colour is lighter than that of any of the Mas- 

 todon specimens I have had an opportunity of seeing. On the 

 whole, the state of preservation of these bones, considering the 

 miry position in which they had lain for centuries unknown, 

 must be a subject of admiration. They were found together in 

 a very small lacustrine deposit four rods wide by fifteen rods 

 long, where no other bones ever have been or are likely to be 

 discovered, since the deposit has been dug to a considerable 

 depth and removed. 



The manner of their discovery was this. In consequence of 

 the uncommon dryness of the season, the proprietor of the farm 

 had determined to remove the deposit for the purpose of manure. 

 After taking away two feet of peat and two feet of red moss, the 

 labourers entered a bed of shell-marl, and at the depth of a foot 

 in this marl the head of the Mastodon was discovered. The 

 thickness of the marl was about three feet, and under it was a 

 bed of vegetable mud, which was penetrated by an iron rod to 

 the depth of twenty feet. The bones, with very slight exceptions, 

 were all lying in their natural relations to each other, the skele- 

 ton being in an upright posture, so that there could be no mis- 

 take as to the unity of the skeleton, nor as to the relative posi- 

 tion of its parts. 



I have said nothing of the tusks nor of the teeth. 



The tusks are two in the upper jaw and one in the lower. 

 Those of the upper jaw were when discovered about ten feet long 

 (about two feet of which are now decomposed, four feet very 

 much impaired and broken, and the remaining four feet, being 

 the anterior extremity of the tusk, are in an almost perfect state). 



The tusk in the lower jaw is single. It is this tusk, which 

 our excellent anatomists, Godman and Hays, considered as the 

 distinctive character of the species Tetracaulodon. The perfect 

 resemblance between the bones of my Mastodon and those of the 

 one from New Jersey, most satisfactorily prove that they were 

 both of the same species. The latter specimen is of a younger 

 animal, as shown by the distinctness of the epiphyses, yet it has 

 no tusk in the lower jaw. AVhence it follows, that this sub- 

 maxillary tusk may exist in the early life of both sexes, and 

 disappear in the female at the adult age, but does not belong 

 to a distinct species. The opinion, therefore, which you have 



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