Florida and Some Snakes 223 



i 



free with my fingers, for it was buried in soft sand. Frank 

 was utterly mystified; declared there had never been any 

 circus near enough to suppose a dead elephant might have 

 been buried where we were. I kept the spot in mind, how- 

 ever, and some years afterwards went back while visiting 

 Charles and Louise Choate at Pabn Beach. I got a good 

 many interesting bones of a perfectly gigantic elephant 

 and fragments of some other things as well, but after a 

 month or more of steady digging it was quite obvious that 

 the best of the material had been smashed up and dispersed 

 in the process of digging the canal. This was a bitter dis- 

 appointment. 



I have a shoulder blade of this elephant here in the 

 Museum on exhibition now. I showed it to Dr. Forster 

 Cooper, Director of the British Museum, when he last 

 visited us. He said that beyond question it represented the 

 largest individual elephant that he had ever seen, and he 

 was widely experienced. The shoulder blade of a fair-sized 

 mastodon which is mounted in our Museum is literally 

 only about 60 per cent in height or area compared to our 

 Palm Beach giant. I have just measured our mastodon, 

 which stands about 8' 3" at the withers, probably 8' 8" or 

 9" in life, whereas the shoulder blade from Palm Beach, 

 assuming the proportions are more or less those of the 

 mastodon, which they were not, for we know the Florida 

 elephant was much longer-legged in proportion, indicates 

 an animal 13' 10" high, and probably considerably more. 

 There is an enormous elephant in the Amherst College 

 Museum which Dr. Loomis bought from C. P. Singleton, 

 who dug it up at Melbourne, Florida, only a few miles from 

 Grandmother's old home. This is a huge animal, but not 



