ELEPHANT MOUND. 



153 



Although both the mound and pipes have been referred in turn to 

 the peccary, the tapir, and the armadillo, it is safe to exclude these 

 animals from consideration. It is indeed perhaps more likely that the 

 ancient inhabitants of the Upjier Mississippi Valley were autoptically 

 acquainted with the mastodon than with either of the above-named an- 

 imals, owing to their southern habitat. 



Eeferring to the possibility that the mastodon was known to the 

 Mound-Builders, it is impossible to fix with any degree of precision 

 the time of its disappearance from among living animals. Mastodmi 

 bones have been exhumed from peat beds in this country at a depth 

 which, so far as is proved by the rate of deposition, implies that the 

 animal may have been alive within five hundred years. The extinc- 

 tion of the mastodon, geologically speaking, was certainly a very 

 recent event, and, as an antiquity of upwards of a thousand or more 

 years has been assigned to some of the mounds, it is entirely within 

 the possibilities that this animal was living at the time these were 

 thrown up, granting even that the time of their erection has been over- 

 estimated. It must be admitted, therefore, that there are no inherent 

 absurdities in the belief that the Mound-Builders were acquainted 

 with the mastodon. Granting that they may have been acquainted 

 with the animal, the question arises, what proof is there that tbey act- 

 ually were? The answer to this question made by certain archreol- 

 ogists is— the Elephant Mound, of Wisconsin. 



0m 



%iiiiiiiiiifS« 





^^ 



Scale 31 feet to the incli. 

 Flu. 27.— Tlie Elephant Mounil, Grant County, Wisconsin. 



Eecalling the fact that among the animal mounds many nondescript 

 shapes occur which cannot be identified at all, and as many others 

 which have been called after the animals they appear to most nearly 

 resemble, carry out their peculiarities only in the most vague and 



