appendix: elephant pipes and rNscRip.F.n tablets. 279 



come them with stone hatchets, obsidian knives, and all the wretched weapons 

 the importance of which we have been so long in recognizing in America, as in 

 Europe."* 



Neither must it be overlooked that Mr. Henshaw himself admits that 

 the extinction of the mastodon on this continent was a very recent 

 event — probably within Jive hundred years prior to its discovery — and 

 that, inasmuch as an antiquity of at least a thousand years has been 

 assigned to the mounds, there are, therefore, no inherent absurdities in 

 the beHef that the Mound-builders were acquainted with the mastodon. 

 In a paper upon the "Post-tertiary Phenomenon of Michigan," Prof. 

 Winchell remarked, concerning the peat-beds, that "These beds are the 

 sites of ancient lakelets, slowly filled up by the accumulation of sedi- 

 ment. They enclose numerous remains of the mastodon and mam- 

 moth. They are sometimes found so near the surface that one could 

 believe ihey have been buried within five hundred or a thousand 

 years."f On the other hand, Mr. James Orton ;{: joins with Sir John 

 Lubbock in assigning to man in America an antiquity of at least three 

 thousand years ;§ and Dr. Charles C. Abbott, in confirmation of these 

 views, remarks: "ft is unquestionable that many of the remains of 

 the mastodon found in New Jersey and New York are far more recent 

 than some of the relics of man, and it is simply impossible that even so 

 late a comer as the Indian should not have seen living mastodons on the 

 Atlantic seaboard of this continent. '' || It seems to be established, 

 therefore, that the date of the extinction of the elephant and the date 

 of the a]>pearance of man in America overlapped during a long lapse 

 of time, and that for a period of a thousand or more years man and 

 the mastodon must have coexisted on this continent. Yet, while this 

 fact seems to be admitted by Mr. Henshaw, his admission is qualified 

 with serious "doubts" as to the sufficiency of the "proof presented to 

 substantiate it." In his eagerness to find some support for his "doubts," 

 he approaches, if he does not overstep, the limits of legal libel, in mis- 

 representing the pipes by the use of false illustrations, and in charging 

 Mr. Gass with the perpetration of a mercenary fraud, and violates all 

 canons of propriety in branding, by implication, the members of the 

 Davenport Academy as participants in this disgraceful deception. 



* " Prehistoric America," by Nadaillac, p. 15. 



f'Recent Orig'in of Man," p. 331 (Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1S71, p. 239). 

 :f "The Andes and the Amazons," 3d ed., p. 109. 

 §" Prehistoric Times," p. 2S6. 

 Popular Science Monthly, Julv, iSS;, p. 310. 



