154 ANIMAL CARVINGS. 



geueral way, it is a little difficult to understand the confidence with 

 -which this effigy has been asserted to represent the mastodou ; for the 

 mound (a copy of which as figured in the Smithsonian Annual Report 

 for 1872 is here given) can by no means be said to closely represent the 

 shape, proportions, and peculiarities of the animal whose name it bears- 

 In fact, it is true of this, as of so many other of the effigies, the identity 

 of which must be guessed, that the resemblance is of the most vague 

 and general kind, the figure simulating the elephant no more closely 

 tkan any one of a score or more mounds in Wisconsin, except in one 

 important particular, viz, the head has a prolongation or snout-like 

 appendage, which is its chief, in fact its only real, elephantine charac- 

 ter. If this appendage is too long for the snout of any other known 

 animal, it is certainly too short for the trunk of a mastodon. Still, so 

 far as this one character goes, it is doubtless true that it is more sug- 

 gestive of the mastodon than of any other auimal. No hint is afforded 

 of tusks, ears, or tail, and were it not for the snout the animal effigy 

 might readily be called a bear, it nearly resembling in its general make- 

 up manj' of the so-called bear mounds figured by Squier and Davis from 

 this same county in Wisconsin. The latter, too, are of the same gigan- 

 tic size and proportions. 



If it can safely be assumed that an animal effigy without tusks, with- 

 out ears, and without a tail was really intended to represent a mastodon, 

 it would be stretcliing imagination but a step farther to call all the large- 

 bodied, heavy-limbed animal effigies hitherto named bears, mastodons, 

 attributing the lack of trunks, as well as ears, tusks, and tails, to inatten- 

 tion to slight details on the part of the mouud artist. 



It is true that one bit of good, positive proof is worth many of a neg- 

 ative character. But here the one positive resemblance, the trunk of 

 the sui)posed elephant, falls far short of an exact imitation, and, as the 

 other features necessary to a good likeness of a mastodon are wholly 

 wanting, is not this an instance where the negative proof should be held 

 sufficient to largely outweigh the positive ? 



In connection with this question the fact should not be overlooked 

 that, among the great number of animal effigies in Wisconsin and else- 

 where, this is the only one which even thus remotely suggests the mas- 

 todon. As the Mound Builders were in the habit of repeating the same 

 animal form again and again, not only in the same but in widely distant 

 localities, why, if this was really intended for a mastodou, are there no 

 others like it? It cannot be doubted that the size and extraordinary 

 features of this monster among mammals would have prevented it be- 

 ing overlooked by the Mound-Builders when so many animals of inferior 

 interest engaged their attention. The fact that the mouud is a uonde- 

 ficript, with no others resembling it, certainly lessens the probability 

 that it was an intentional representation of the mastodou, and increases 

 the likelihood that its slight resemblance was accidental; a slide of earth 

 from the head, for instance, might readily be interpreted by the modern 



