MASTODON ANGUSTIDENS. 297 
the tropics it has extended both south and north into 
temperate latitudes ; and, in America, remains of the Mas- 
todon have been discovered on the western coast, as high 
as the 66th degree of north latitude.* But the metropolis 
of the Mastodon giganteus in the United States, like that 
of the Mastodon angustidens of Europe, lies in a more tem- 
perate zone, and we have no evidence that any species 
was specially adapted, like the Mammoth, for braving the 
rigours of an arctic winter. 
The Mastodon unquestionably possessed a long proboscis, 
the chief office of which, in the Elephant, is to seize and 
break off the boughs of trees for food. There is nothing 
in the ascertained organization of the Mastodon, to lead 
us to doubt that such was also the principal function of the 
trunk in that genus. Cuvier, however, was of opinion that 
the Mastodon applied its teeth, as the Hippopotamus and 
Hog do, to the mastication of tender vegetables, roots, and 
aquatic plants. But the large eminences of the grinding 
teeth, the unusual thickness of the enamel, and the al- 
most entire absence of the softer cement from the grinding 
surface of the crown, would rather indicate that they had 
been instruments for crushing harder and coarser substances 
than those for the mastication of which the more complex 
but weaker grinders of the Elephants are adapted. 
It has been conjectured that the Mastodons were more 
aquatic, or swamp-haunting quadrupeds than the Elephants; 
their limbs were, however, proportionally shorter, although 
constructed on the same type, each foot being terminated by 
five short and stout toes, which were evidently, by the form 
of the last phalanx, confined in one common thick hoof. 
The leg-bones are stronger in proportion than those of the 
* Dekay, ‘ Fauna of New York.’ 
+ ‘Ossemens Fossiles,’ tom, i. 4to, 1821, p. 225. 
