224 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



Ameghino, and by the Europeans, Owen, Gervais, Hux- 

 ley, Von Meyer, and more recently by Burmeister and 

 Lydekker. Later exploration and research by Hatcher 

 and Scott of North America will be discussed further on 

 in this paper. 



Vertebrate Paleontology in America. 



Early Writers. Having thus summarized paleontolog- 

 ical progress in the Old World, we can turn to a consid- 

 eration of the work done in the New, especially in the 

 United States, because while the Old World investigation 

 has been invaluable, a science of vertebrate paleontology, 

 very complete both as to its zoological and geological 

 scope and in the extent and value of published results, 

 could be built exclusively upon the discoveries and 

 researches made by Americans. The science of verte- 

 brate paleontology may be said to have had its beginnings 

 in North America with the activities of Thomas Jeffer- 

 son, who, like Franklin, felt so strong an interest in 

 scientific pursuits that even the graver duties of the high- 

 est office in the gift of the American people could not 

 deter him from them. When in 1797 Jefferson came to 

 be inaugurated as vice-president of the United States, he 

 brought with him to Philadelphia not only his manuscript 

 but the actual fossil bones upon which it was based. 

 Again in 1801 he was greatly interested in the Shawan- 

 gunk mastodon, despite heavy cares of state, and in 1808 

 made part of the executive mansion in Washington serve 

 as a paleontological laboratory, displaying therein for 

 study the bones of proboscideans and their contempora- 

 ries which the Big Bone Lick of Kentucky had produced. 

 Jefferson's work would not, perhaps, have been epoch- 

 making were it not for its unique chronological position 

 in the annals of the science. 



Jefferson was followed by another man this time one 

 whose diverging lines of interest led him not into the 

 realm of political service, but of art, for Eembrandt 

 Peale possessed an enviable reputation among the early 

 painters of America. Peale published in 1802 an account 

 of the skeleton of the "mammoth," really the mastodon, 

 M. americanus, speaking of it as a nondescript carnivor- 



