THE MASTODON 163 



day the spade of the farmer as he sinks a ditch to drain 

 what is left of some beaver pond of bygone days, strikes 

 some bone as brown and rugged as a root, so like a 

 piece of water-soaked wood that nine times out of ten 

 it is taken for a fragment of tree-trunk. 



The first notice of the mastodon in North America 

 goes back to 1712, and is found in a letter from Cotton 

 Mather to Dr. Woodward (of England?) written at 

 Boston on November 17th, in which he speaks of a large 

 work in manuscript entitled Biblia Americana, and 

 gives as a sample a note on the passage in Genesis (VI. 

 4) in which we read that " there were giants in the earth 

 in those days." We are told that this is confirmed by 

 "the bones and teeth of some large animal found lately 

 in Albany, in New England, which for some reason he 

 thinks to be human ; particularly a tooth brought from 

 the place where it was found to New York in 1705, being 

 a very large grinder, weighing four pounds and three 

 quarters; with a bone supposed to be a thigh-bone, 

 seventeen feet long," the total length of the body being 

 taken as seventy-five feet. Thus bones of the mastodon, 

 as well as those of the mammoth, have done duty as 

 those of giants. 



And as the first mastodon remains recorded from 

 North America came from the region west of the 

 Hudson, so the first fairly complete skeleton also came 

 from that locality, secured at a very considerable out- 

 lay of money and a still more considerable expenditure 

 of labor by the exertions of C. W. Peale. This specimen 

 was described at some length by Rembrandt Peale in a 

 privately printed pamphlet, now unfortunately rare, 

 and described in some respects better than has been 

 done by any subsequent writer, since the points of differ- 

 ence between various parts of the mastodon and ele- 

 phant were clearly pointed out. This skeleton was ex- 



