THE MASTODON 209 



mastodon is far commoner in the museums of 

 this country than is the African elephant, for 

 at the present date there are eleven of the 

 former to one of the latter, the single skeleton 

 of African elephant being that of Jumbo in 

 the American IMuseum of Natural History. 

 If one may judge by the abundance of bones, 

 mastodons must have been very numerous 

 in some favored localities such as parts of 

 Michigan, Florida, and Missouri and about 

 Big Bone Lick, Ky. Perhaps the most note- 

 worthy of all deposits is that at Kimmswick, 

 about twenty miles south of St. Louis, where 

 in a limited area JNIr. L. W. Beehler has ex- 

 humed bones representing several hundred 

 individuals, varying in size from a mere baby 

 mastodon up to the great tusker whose worn- 

 out teeth proclaim that he had reached the 

 limit of even mastodonic old age. The spot 

 where this remarkable deposit was found is at 

 the foot of a bluff near the junction of two 

 little streams, and it seems probable that in 

 the days when these were larger the spring 

 floods swept down the bodies of animals that 

 had perished during the winter to ground in 



