13 



etc., are entirely extinct, yet the discoveries made of 

 the remains even of some of these, would indicate 

 that they still existed at a period so recent, that, in 

 the language of Professor Leidy, "it is probable the 

 red man witnessed their declining existence." 



The peccary, or Mexican hog, an animal common 

 in Mexico, is not indigenous to the Atlantic United 

 States ; but his bones have been found associated 

 with human remains in caves used as cemeteries by 

 the A boriginees.* "A tomb in the city of Mexico," 

 according to Clavigero, (?)f "was found to contain 

 the bones of an entire mammoth, the sepulchre ap- 

 pearing to have been formed expressly for their re- 

 ception." And "Mr. Latrobe relates that during the 

 prosecution of some excavations, near the city of 

 Tezcuco, one of the ancient roads or causeways was 

 discovered, and on one side, only three feet below 

 the surface, in what may have been the ditch of the 

 road, there lay the entire skeleton of a mastodon. It 

 bore every appearance of having been coeval with 

 the period when the road was used." 



Again I extract from Prof. Leidy's letter :J 



" The early existence of the genera to which our domestic 

 animals belong, has been adduced as presumptive evidence of 

 the advent of man at a more remote period than is usually as- 

 signed. It must be remembered, however, even at the present 

 time that of some of these genera only a few species are domes- 

 ticated: thus of the existing six species of Equus (Horse) only 

 two have ever been freely brought under the dominion of man. 



" The Horse did not exist in America at the time of its disco- 

 very by Europeans; but its remains, consisting chiefly of molar 

 teeth, have now been so frequently found in association with 

 those of extinct animals, that it is generally admitted once to 

 have been an aboriginal inhabitant. When I first saw examples 

 of these remains I was not disposed to view them as relics of an 

 extinct species; for although some presented characteristic dif- 

 ferences from those of previously known species, others were 

 undistinguishable from the corresponding parts of the domestic 

 horse, and among them were intermediate varieties of form and 



* Brad ford's American Antiquities, p. 31. 



t Bradford's American Antiquities, p. 227. 



% Nott and. Gliddon, Indigenous races of the earth; p. xviii. 



