MASTODON. 181 



to be found lias been more comjjlctt^ly settled since tliDn, and that where the remains of Probosci- 

 deans do occur, they are generally found in abundance. The absence of Proboscidean remains in 

 Australia gives us an additional date for its separation from the Indian Continent. Proboscideans first 

 appeared in the miocene epoch, therefore Australia has remained separated from the continent at 

 least ever since then. For how much longer before that date we have a good guess from other sources. 



To the great numbers of bones and teeth which have been collected of these extinct giants (believed 

 by our ancestors to be Goliaths of our own species), we owe a more perfect knowledge of the Probos- 

 cideans than of any other extinct animal. But our knowledge has not been wholly derived from piece- 

 meal discoveries of separate bones. Like the woolly-haired Rhinoceros, carcasses of the Mammoth, 

 centuries, — nay, perhaps thousands of years old, — possibly millions, have been fomid preserved in, and 

 obtained from, the frozen sandy river-banks of Siberia, and thus furnished materials for scientific 

 examination. It is true that no discovery of the carcass of the Mastodon, preserved in that way, 

 has ever been made (it was, perhaps, a less boreal animal) ; but discoveries of no small interest 

 regarding it, too, have been made not'W'ithstnnding. In North America, in draining or digging out 

 marl or fertilizing mud from small ponds, which, in the days of the Mastodons, were, no doubt, 

 quaking marshes, remains of several entire skeletons have been found undisturbed, lying in the 

 attitudes in which they died ; they had undoubtedly become mired in the bogs, and had perished 

 miserabl}'. The most perfect of these are described bj' Dr. Warren in his monograph of the 

 Mastodon of North America.* In "Warren County, New Jersey, no less than six were found at 

 about six feet below the surface ; one specimen found in the town of Newbury, New York, was 

 twenty-five feet in length, and twelve feet high, and with tusks ten "feet long. Fancy six of these 

 stupendous creatures ; huddled together in the sinking mire. Imagine their trumpeting and 

 shrieking, their bewildered dismay, their unwieldy eSbrts to move their limbs, only to sink 

 deeper after every fresh exertion ; their terror — marked by five of the six having been found quite 

 close together (the sixth was at about ten feet distant) ; they had rushed together for mutual 

 support only to add to their danger by concentrating the weight on one spot. They had struggled 

 long, no doubt, and died hard. The attitude of one of them is described as ha^-ing the legs spread 

 abroad, and with the fore-legs in the position of making an clfort to raise itself. Of course, all 

 the soft parts had long since disapjaearcd, their being no ice to protect them. But there was 

 found what both Pallas and Adams overlooked in their ice-bound specimens, — the contents of 

 the stomach. In one of these American examples, there was taken from the clay in the interior, 

 within tlie ribs, where the stomach must have lain, no less than seven biishels of vegetable 

 matter, consisting of leaves and small twigs more or less bruised and comminuted, which have 

 been ascertained by microscopical examination to belong to a coniferous plant, probably the white 

 cedar (Thuya occidentalis), one of the North American cjqjresses. These elephantine animals there- 

 fore browsed upon the common conifers of the country, in the same wav as the woolly-haired 

 Rhinoceros did on conifers in Siberia ; evidence that the}', like it and the Mammoth, and the trees 

 on M'hich thoj' fed, were all adapted for a cold or temperate climate. 



Such an adaptation seems to have been common to the whole section of Mastodous to which they 

 belong. The remains of the trilophodont sj^ecics are, with one imperfectly known exception (M. 

 Paxdioxis), all found in the northern countries or regions, which we know to have been cold. One, 

 or perhaps two — wc have two names and two descriptions — have been found on the Andes in South 



* Warren, .T. C, " Description of the Skfletoii of the JIastodon Gigantcus," 1855. 



