28 FOURTH REPORT — 1834. 



animals now extinct, for the salt, and it may be for the food and 

 pleasant coolness produced by the marsh. Our travellers to the 

 western regions, where the Buffalo or Bison now ranges, have 

 daily opportunities of witnessing these animals entrapped and 

 perishing in these licks and swamps ; and it seems evident that 

 the Mastodon and Elephant of former times, from their huge 

 size and unwieldy forms, must have been equally exposed to 

 the same fate. Granting such to have been the chief cause 

 which has buried these races, we see at once why such remains 

 are found only in meadows or soft places, why they occur at 

 such small depths, and why in so many cases the head has been 

 seen resting nearly on the surface of the marsh ; the cranium 

 universally decayed ; and the skeleton either in its natural erect 

 position, or the ponderous bones below, and the ribs and verte- 

 brae above. (See Annals of the Neiv York Lyceum, vol. i. 

 p. 145., also Ossemens Fossiles, 2nd edit. tom. i. pp. 217, 222.) 



The state of perfect preservation in which so many of these 

 bones are found, is another argvmient that the animals have 

 perished by such a cause, and not by any violent catastrophe. 

 There is at present in the Philadelphia Museum a pair of mag- 

 nificent tusks of the Mastodon, so little acted on by time, that 

 the beholder almost fancies he sees the marks and scratches on 

 the enamel which it received in the living state. These beauti- 

 ful remains were found by a countryman in Ohio when digging 

 an ordinary ditch in his meadow, so that it is probable that the 

 rest of the skeleton lies near, and at very little depth. From all 

 the facts before me, I have little hesitation in giving my opinion 

 that the extinct gigantic animals of this continent, the Mastodon, 

 Elephant, Megalonyx, Megatherium, fossil Bos, and fossil Cervus 

 lived down to a comparatively recent period, and that some of 

 them were in existence as long ago as the sera anterior to that 

 which covered the greatest part of this continent with diluvium. 



Two interesting conclusions seem here naturally to suggest 

 themselves : first, that the diluvial catastrophe, whatsoever it 

 may have been, could not have introduced any very material 

 change of climate or condition upon the continent, or we should 

 have beheld the races sooner extinguished ; and, secondly, that 

 the physical features of the surface were the same or very nearly 

 the same when the Mastodon lived as now ; so that his extinc- 

 tion seems neither traceable to violent revolutions, so called, nor 

 to any decided change of climate ; which, seeing that no appre- 

 ciable change of physical geography has taken place since his 

 day, ought to remain the same now as when he formerly stalked 

 through the continent, and perished in the same morasses 

 which at this day entrap and bury our less gigantic living races 

 of animals. 



