INTRODUCTION. 121 



size near Albany (New York), and surmised that they must 

 have belonged to a race of giants. In 1739, a French officer, 

 Longueil, brought back to Paris fossil bones and teeth found 

 in a marsh near Ohio. Daubenton and Buffon identified 

 the bones as Elephas and the back teeth as Hippopotamus 

 remains. More complete fossil remains were discovered by 

 Croghan and Peale, and the restoration of a skeleton was 

 attempted. Cuvier, with his customary insight, recognised in 

 this an extinct genus of Proboscidae, to which he gave the 

 name of Mastodon. His great work on Mastodon gives a full 

 account of all the remains of this extinct genus that had been 

 found up to that time in North America. 



In a cave in West Virginia, Jefferson discovered along with 

 Mastodon remains the extremities of another diluvial animal. 

 Cuvier examined these, and referred them to a gigantic genus 

 (Megalonyx) belonging to the Edentates. 



Throughout Mexico, Yucatan, Bolivia, Peru and Chili, fossil 

 bones of enormous size had been frequently found during the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1789, Loretto, the 

 Regent of Buenos Ayres, sent a complete skeleton of one of 

 these fossil animals to Madrid, and shortly after, two other 

 skeletons were sent from Lima and Paraguay. These were 

 described by J. Garriga under the generic name of Mega- 

 therium; they were found to belong to the Edentates, and, 

 like Megalonyx, to the sub-order Gravigrada. Garriga's iden- 

 tification was afterwards confirmed by Cuvier. The first 

 remains of a Glyptodon, another of these heavily-built fossil 

 Edentates, are mentioned by the Jesuit Falkner in the account 

 of his travels. 



Alexander von Humboldt's observations were the earliest 

 contribution to the geology of Central America. This great 

 geographer applied Werner's system of rock-formations, and 

 wherever he travelled in Central and South America identified 

 the rocks in accordance with Werner's petrographical teaching. 

 He thought that the distribution of the rocks in these regions 

 fully confirmed Werner's chronological succession of the groups 

 of formations. 



In Asia, the pioneer work of Pallas in Siberia and the Urals 

 was continued by Patrin, who published in 1783 the Account 

 oj his Travels in the Altai Mountains. The geological struc- 

 ture of Central and Southern Asia, Australia, and Africa was 

 still a blank in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The 



