REMAINS OF MASTODON. 83 



panied, particularly where they are crossed by gullies, by circular 

 and oval mounds, as regular as if thrown up artificially. 



Just as we attribute the formation of the older or boulder drift to 

 the action of water and ice, while the land was subsiding beneath a 

 frozen sea, so we may assign as the cause of the superficial gravels 

 the action of these same waters while the country was being elevated 

 above their level. Many of the mounds of gravel have evidently 

 been formed by currents of water rushing through and scooping out 

 the present valleys. Some of the more regular ridges are apparently 

 of the nature of the gravel beaches which are thrown by the sea 

 across the mouths of bays and coves, and may mark the continuance 

 of the sea-level unchanged for some time in the progress of elevation. 

 Others may have been pressed up by the edges of sheets of ice, in 

 the manner of the ridges along the borders of our present lakes. 

 That the action of ice in some form had not ceased, we have evidence in 

 the large boulders sometimes found on the summits of the gravel ridges. 



In the island of Cape Breton the bones of a large elephantine 

 quadruped, evidently a species of Mastodon, have been found in con- 

 nexion with the superficial gravel. This gigantic creature probably 

 inhabited our country at the close of the Glacial or Drift period, and 

 may have been contemporary with some of the present animals, though 

 probably extinct before the introduction of the human race. The 

 existence of this huge quadruped does not imply a tropical or even 

 very warm climate, since in a skeleton found in Warren county. New 

 Jersey, fragments of twigs, lying in such a position as to show that 

 they had formed part of the food of the creature, were found by- 

 microscopic examination to have belonged to a species of cypress, 

 probably the common white cedar of America ; so that the animal 

 probably browsed as the moose does at present, and could live in any 

 wooded region.* One specimen found in the state of New York 

 measured twenty-five feet in length and twelve feet in height. In 

 Nova Scotia the animal must have attained to similar dimensions, for 

 a thigh-bone, now in the museum of the Mechanics' Institute in Hali- 

 fax, though apparently somewhat worn, measures three feet eleven 

 inches in length. This huge bone and some fragments of a tusk, 

 were the only remains of this animal that I had seen before the pub- 

 lication of the first edition of this work. A molar tooth has since 

 been found in Cape JJrcton by Dr Honeyman, and I am now enabled 

 by his kind assistance to figure the thigli-bone and tooth from photo- 

 graphs (Figs. 23 and 24). The species appears to be the Mastodon 

 giganteus. 



* Lyell, "Manual of Geolopy." 



