58 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 



mented to a layer of gravel a foot and a half in thickness, with such 

 tenacity that the separation was accomplished with the greatest difficulty. 



In the same collection of fossil bones is to be found the skeleton, nearly 

 complete, of a mastodon of very large size ; the ribs, and the upper part 

 of the cranium are wanting. The transverse diameter of the head, on 

 a line with the foramen magnum, is three feet. The os femoris, in a per- 

 pendicular line, stands three feet nine inches high, and all the other bones 

 are in this proportion. An estimate of the altitude of the animal when 

 living, founded upon careful observations, instituted with the same view 

 on the skeleton from Bucyrus, Ohio, recently obtained by the Society, 

 would leave the inference that the former animal has reached a height 

 of from twelve to thirteen feet at the shoulders. This animal, in a popu- 

 lar advertisement on the subject of the museum by Mr. Koch, is rated at 

 eighteen feet in height ; an altitude so great as to exceed much the evi- 

 dence derivable from a measurement of the longest bones of the extremi- 

 ties, and the inductive and comparative estimate thence obtained. 



The internal table of the cranium, the brain case, is entire, with a small 

 surface of the contiguous cellular structure of bone in another fragment 

 of the mastodon. This forms so complete an oval body, that, in Dr. Hor- 

 ner's opinion, it is somev.'hat difficult to conceive that its shape was the 

 result of merely accidental causes ; Dr. Horner, indeed, thinks it rather 

 authorizes the inference that it had been chiselled or hammered design- 

 edly into that shape by the human cotemporaries of the animal. 



There is also a small head eighteen or twenty inches long, with tusks 

 ten or eleven inches long in the upper jaw, and four mastodon teeth on 

 each side of each jaw. This head is somewhat broken. The os frontis 

 and the face, so far as Dr. Horner could judge, are so placed in regard to 

 their front surface as to form a deep circular concavity, approximating, in 

 shape, a fragment in the cabinet of the Society. Whether it ought to be 

 viewed merely as a young Mastodon giganteum, or another species of the 

 mastodon. Dr. Horner considers to be at present doubtful. 



There are two radii of the mastodon with the epiphyses or articular 

 ends detached, owing to the youth of the animal : these pass for the arm 

 bones of a giant fourteen or fifteen feet high when his skeleton was com- 

 plete. A similar misapprehension exists in regard to the vertebrae of a 

 quadruped, probably a buffalo or young mammoth, which are strung to- 

 gether in a vertical position and pass for the back bone of a giant of simi- 

 lar kind. 



Another interesting relic has been denominated by the proprietor Mis- 

 sourium Kochii, the first name in commemoration of its locality, the second 

 of himself, its discoverer. It belongs undoubtedly. Dr. Horner states, to 

 the mastodon race ; was not much inferior in size to the elephant, and was 

 furnished with tusks and indications of a proboscis having been attached 

 to it. The tusks are four and a half feet in length, and at the roots have 



