FOSSILS OF THE GRAVEL SERIES: PROBOSCIDEANS. 251 
parts corresponding to the fossil specimens just indicated [teeth and jaw frag- 
ments], it is not improbable that these really belong to an extinct species.” 
We come next to the most abundant and widely disseminated of all the 
animal remains found in California, namely, those of the Proboscidew, including 
both the mastodon and the elephant. The widespread occurrence of these 
animals on the American continent during the later Tertiary times is a fact 
well known to all naturalists, and the literature relating to this subject is 
already very extensive.* It will be impossible to enumerate all the localities 
in California where the remains of the mastodon and elephant have been 
observed; the most that can be done will be to mention some of the most 
important facts connected with their occurrence. 
In the first place, as to the mastodon, the remains of which animal in Cali- 
fornia are decidedly more abundant and more widely distributed than those 
of the elephant. On the map given in Murray’s “Geographical Distribution 
of Mammals,” to illustrate the range of the fossil proboscideans during the 
Pliocene period, the whole of North America is colored to indicate their ex- 
istence, excepting the extreme northeast, along the coast of Labrador and 
farther north. It would not be correct, however, for California, to extend the 
range of either the mastodon or the elephant over the whole of the Sierra. 
So far as known to the writer, the bones of these animals have not been 
found high up on the mountains. Their habitat seems to have been in the 
Coast Ranges, and along the foot-hills of the Sierra, up to an elevation little, 
if at all, exceeding 3,000 feet. By far the larger number of the remains 
which have come under the writer’s notice have been at elevations little ex- 
ceeding 2,000 feet; while, as before remarked, the skeletons which have been 
found under such circumstances as to indicate that they had not been moved 
since the individual’s death are limited to the region at the base of the foot- 
hills. The portion of the State where mastodon remains have been found in 
the greatest abundance is that in the vicinity of Sonora and Columbia, along 
the limestone belt, so often alluded to in the preceding pages. Cart-loads 
of masiodon bones, as has been repeatedly stated to the writer on good 
authority, have been accumulated at various places between Sonora and 
the Stanislaus River at the workings in the limestone crevices. Most of these 
have been destroyed by the inevitable fires which periodically consume the 
mining towns, and those not burned have generally crumbled to pieces for 
* In Dr. Leidy’s article on the Mastodon, in the Extinct Mammalia of North America, there are four 
solid quarto pages, in fine print, of references to authors who have written on the Mastodon Americanus. 
