THE GREAT MASTODON. 151 



Museum of Natural History in Philadelphia, 

 succeeded in completing, so far as to give a 

 tolerable idea of the form and size of this animal. 

 In one of the deposits of bones found at Withe, 

 in Virginia, a mass of little branches, grass, and 

 leaves, in a half bruised state, among them a 

 species of rose, now common in Virginia, were 

 found enclosed in a kind of sac, which is the 

 authority authors have, independent of their 

 reasoning from its structure, that the animal 

 fed on these substances ; while there are records 

 existing of the natives having found, with some 

 heads, " a long nose, under which was the 

 mouth." 



When these remains came under the inspection 

 of Baron Cuvier, he at once considered them as 

 belonging to an animal, which would form a 

 genus different from the Elephant, and proposed 

 for it the title of Mastodon, from the mammillary 

 form of the teeth ; and after concluding his 

 examination, he sums up the whole, by giving an 

 opinion of the form and mode of life of this 

 animal. 



" That the great Mastodon, or animal of the 

 Ohio, resembled the Elephant in its tusks and 

 osteology, except in the form of the grinders ; that 

 it had most probably a trunk ; that its height did 

 not surpass that of the Elephant, but that it was 

 of a larger form, and had thicker limbs, with a 



