MASTODON ANGUSTIDENS. 297 



the tropics it has extended both south and north into 

 temperate latitudes ; and, in America, remains of the Mas- 

 todon have been discovered on the western coast, as high 

 as the 66th degree of north latitude.* But the metropolis 

 of the Mastodon giganteus in the United States, like that 

 of the Mastodon angustidens of Europe, lies in a more tem- 

 perate zone, and we have no evidence that any species 

 was specially adapted, like the Mammoth, for braving the 

 rigours of an arctic winter. 



The Mastodon unquestionably possessed a long proboscis, 

 the chief office of which, in the Elephant, is to seize and 

 break off the boughs of trees for food. There is nothing 

 in the ascertained organization of the Mastodon, to lead 

 us to doubt that such was also the principal function of the 

 trunk in that genus. Cuvier, however, was of opinion that 

 the Mastodon applied its teeth, as the Hippopotamus and 

 Hog do, to the mastication of tender vegetables, roots, and 

 aquatic plants. "f* But the large eminences of the grinding 

 teeth, the unusual thickness of the enamel, and the al- 

 most entire absence of the softer cement from the grinding 

 surface of the crown, would rather indicate that they had 

 been instruments for crushing harder and coarser substances 

 than those for the mastication of which the more complex 

 but weaker grinders of the Elephants are adapted. 



It has been conjectured that the Mastodons were more 

 aquatic, or swamp-haunting quadrupeds than the Elephants ; 

 their limbs were, however, proportionally shorter, although 

 constructed on the same type, each foot being terminated by 

 five short and stout toes, which were evidently, by the form 

 of the last phalanx, confined in one common thick hoof. 

 The leg-bones are stronger in proportion than those of the 



* Dekay, ' Fauna of New York.' 



) ' Ossemens Fossiles,' torn. i. 4to, 1821, p. 225. 



