352 REMAINS OF MASTODON GIGANTEUS. CHAP. xvm. 



the European Mephas primigenius, although the latter also 

 occurs fossil in the United States and Canada, and abounds, 

 as I learn from Sir John Kichardson, in latitudes farther north 

 than those to which the mastodon has been traced. 



In the state of New York, the mastodon is not unfrequently 

 met with in bogs and lacustrine deposits formed in hollows in 

 the drift, and therefore, in a geological position, much resem 

 bling that of recent peat and shell-marl in the British Isles, 

 Denmark, or the Valley of the Somme, as before described. 

 Sometimes entire skeletons have been discovered within a 

 few feet of the surface, in peaty earth at the bottom of small 

 ponds, which the agriculturists had drained. The shells in 

 these cases belong to freshwater genera, such as Limnea, 

 PTiysa, Planorbis, Cyclas, and others, differing from Euro 

 pean species, but the same as those now proper to ponds and 

 lakes in the same parts of America. 



I have elsewhere given an account of several of these 

 localities which I visited in 1842,* and can state that they 

 certainly have a more modern aspect than almost all the 

 European deposits in which remains of the mammoth occur, 

 although a few instances are cited of Elephas primigenius 

 having been dug out of peat in Great Britain. Thus I was 

 shown a mammoth's tooth in the museum at Torquay, in 

 Devonshire, which is believed to have been dredged up from 

 a deposit of vegetable matter now partially submerged beneath 

 the sea. A more elevated part of the same peaty formation 

 constitutes the bottom of the valley in which Tor Abbey 

 stands. This individual elephant must certainly have been of 

 more modern date than his fellows found fossil in the gravel of 

 the Brixham cave, before described (p. 100), for it flourished 

 when the physical geography of Devonshire, unlike that of 

 the cave period, was almost identical with that now established. 



* Travels in North America, vol. i. p. 55, London, 1845 ; and Manual of 

 Geology, ch. xiL 5th ed. p. 144. 



