THE MASTODON 169 



The disappearance of the mastodon is as difficult to 

 account for as that of the mammoth, and, as will be 

 noted, there is absolutely no evidence to show that man 

 had any hand in it. Neither can it be ascribed to change 

 of climate, for the mastodon, as indicated by the wide 

 distribution of its bones, was apparently adapted to a 

 great diversity of climates, and was as much at home 

 amid the cool swamps of Michigan and New York as on 

 the warm savannas of Florida and Louisiana. Certainly 

 the much used, and abused, glacial epoch cannot be 

 held accountable for the extermination of the creature, 

 for the mastodon came into New York after the reces- 

 sion of the great ice-sheet, and tarried to so late a date 

 that bones buried in the swamps retain much of their 

 animal matter. So recent, comparatively speaking, has 

 been the disappearance of the mastodon, and so fresh- 

 looking are some of its bones, that Thomas Jefferson 

 thought in his day that it might still be living in some 

 part of the then unexplored Northwest. 



It is a moot question whether or not man and the 

 mastodon were contemporaries in North America, and 

 while many there be who, like the writer of these lines, 

 believe that this was the case, an expression of belief is 

 not a demonstration of fact. The best that can be said 

 is that there are scattered bits of testimony, slight 

 though they are, which seem to point that way, but no 

 one so strong by itself that it could not be shaken by 

 sharp cross-questioning and enable man to prove an 

 alibi in a trial by jury. For example, in the great bone 

 deposit at Kimmswick, Mo., Mr. Beehler found a flint 

 arrowhead, but this may have lain just over the bone- 

 bearing layer, or have got in by some accident in ex- 

 cavating. How easily a mistake may be made is shown 

 by the report sent to the United States National Mu- 

 seum of many arrowheads associated with mastodon 



