184 WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 



one pair of tusks, many of the species had two, one in 

 each jaw. 



This variety of proboscis-bearing or long-nosed 

 quadruped of the elephant tribe was called the Masto- 

 don. He lived in America as well as in Europe, Asia, 

 and Africa, and could suit himself well to any climate, 

 though, from the many remains that have been found in the 

 temperate zones, he seems to have disliked extremes, 

 either of hot or cold. The mastodon was a huge creature, 

 the skeleton measuring as much as eleven feet in height, 

 with long straight tusks that have been known to stand 

 out as much as ten feet beyond its head. From the fact 

 that stone arrow-heads have been discovered lying round 

 the skeleton in America, and from stories told by the 

 Indians, it seems likely that the mastodon was living in 

 the New World, at any rate when the earliest men peopled 

 the land ; but on our side of the Atlantic it had probably 

 died out long before. 



Anyone who examines the skeletons that have been 

 pieced together by those who have made bones their 

 study, will be struck by two things — the immense size 

 and clumsiness of the dwellers both on earth and in the 

 sea, ages and ages before man was dreamed of, and also by 

 certain resemblances with several forms that survive up 

 to the present moment. Besides the animals with long 

 trunks, there are monsters with long heads, all stuck with 

 bony nobs, and in shape like the rhinoceros. These 

 skeletons are mostly found in North America, and teach 

 us that the beasts to whom they belonged must have 

 been very nearly as big as elephants, to whose legs theirs 

 bear some likeness. Their bodies were very heavy and 

 awkward, and their eyes small ; they had an odd number 

 of toes on their hoofs, and very small brains. Altogether, 

 it is easy to understand how, when the rain descended, 

 and the floods came, in those far-off times, long before the 

 woolly rhinoceros was feeding with the mammoth on the 



