On the Mammoth and the Mastodon. 381 



centre, and in a deep narrow gulf winds round the head of the 

 peninsula into the bay, and now forms the Desjardines Canal. I 

 have no doubt that the large mass of alluvial matter has been 

 formed by the stream in its untiring perseverance. The peninsula 

 is 110 feet in height. The land on each side of the amphitheatre 

 in which the marsh is enclosed rises to a great height, say 150 

 feet above the level of the peninsula. The great puzzle to me is 

 the cemented gravel ; it begins at the surface, is 30 feet thick, is 

 regularly bedded, like the strata in a limestone quarry, has a con- 

 siderable dip, or inclination, and is all but impenetrable. It is as 

 difficult to drill or blast as any limestone. The sand on which it 

 is incumbent is too clean and too fine for building purposes ; of 

 this quality it continues for perhaps 30 feet downwards, and then 

 turns into a loose, coarse gravel, like the beach of the lake. The 

 bones were deposited in the fine sand, in which there was not a 

 vestige of a shell of any description." 



The most celebrated locality for these fossils is at Big Bone 

 Lick, in Kentucky, where it is said the remains of not less than 

 one hundred mastodons and twenty mammoths, with bones of the 

 megalonyx, stag, horse and bison, have been discovered. 



With respect to the time when the mammoth and mastodon 

 became extinct, we have not the slightest evidence of their exis- 

 tence within the human period, although there is sufficient proof 

 I that they existed immediately before the advent of man. The 

 Indians have a tradition bearing upon these remains, of which we 

 find the following account in an old magazine, " The Bee," 

 published December, 1791 : — 



Of the Enormous Bones found in America. 



Between thirty and forty years ago, at a salt lick near the 

 banks of the Ohio, the remains of several skeletons were dis- 

 covered, which demonstrate the former existence of animals very 

 far surpassing in size any at present known. There is now in the 

 museum at Yale College teeth of a monstrous magnitude, sent 

 thither from Muskingum by the late General Parsons. The one 

 which the writer of this account saw was upwards of fifteen inches 

 in circumference, and, including its fangs, twelve or thirteen inches 

 in length. 



In the year 1783, as a labourer was ditching a bog-meadow, 

 belonging to a clergyman at Little Breton, in Ulbster county, he 

 found a mass of bones, not two feet beneath the surface of the 



