MONSTERS OF A BURIED WORLD. 155 



bison's grandfather" which, many moons ago, thundered 

 across the plains, and sent terror to the heart of the savage. 

 The Great Man, they say, slew them, because they were de- 

 stroying the Indians' game. That these creatures existed 

 down to the period of Indian occupation is evinced also, by 

 the discovery of arrow-heads buried in the same peats with 

 these bones, or in peats at greater depths even than some 

 which conceal the bones. 



Such relics have been discovered also, in the Old World, 

 and former generations have been strongly inclined to attrib- 

 ute them to a race of giants now extinct. An intelligent in- 

 spection of these bones, however, shows that they never be- 

 longed to human giants, and can not, therefore, be the re- 

 mains or testimonials of the "giants" of antediluvian times. 

 Modern science has shown that they belonged to elephant-like 

 creatures, of two different genera. One of these was the true 

 Elephant, and the other is known as Mastodon. The Masto- 

 don has not been seen during historic times ; but we conclude 

 from the relics remaining, that it was very similar to the 

 Elephant, and differed chiefly in the structure of the grinding 

 teeth. The molars of the Elephant are enormously large, and 

 only one is in use in each jaw on each side, at one time. It 

 may be regarded, however, as a compound tooth, consisting 

 of ten or twenty simple flat teeth standing closely, and firmly 

 compacted together by means of a substance called cement. 

 The molar of the Mastodon has more the appearance of an 

 ordinary tooth, with three, four, or five transverse promi- 

 nences, rising like steep and furrowed ranges of mountains. It 

 is smaller than the elephant molar ; and three or four were in 

 use at once on each side of each jaw. 



Commonly, as already indicated, the bones of the extinct 

 Elephant and Mastodon have been discovered in peat deposits. 

 Such deposits are explained in Talk VIII, and rest upon the 

 top of the Drift, and are more recent than the Drift. But in 

 Europe bones of the Elephant have sometimes been met with 

 in the modified Drift. They also occur in many caverns which 

 are believed to have been occupied by wild beasts in the 



