April 6, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



523 



Natural Wi^wvyi* 



THE MASTODON GIGANTEUS. 

 The mastodon, that great fossil mammal, allied some- 

 what nearly to the elephant, has become, perhaps, more 

 familiar to the public than any other of the numerous 

 great creatures which once lived in the United States. 

 This familiarity came about through the frequent dis- 

 covery of well-preserved skeletons of the mastodon. 



In nearly every State west of New England portions 

 of this creature have been disinterred. And every year 

 there are several found, more or less in a state of com- 



mastodon, like the fossil elephant of America, lived in 

 the period allotted to man, while the marvellous great 

 skeletons of extinct mammals which have also been 

 found in the western "Bad Lands," are of more 

 ancient date, being of the Miocene and other ancient 

 deposits. 



The most perfect, and also the most remarkable, as to 

 size and interesting developments, is the skeleton of a 

 mastodon now mounted in the Geological Hall of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, in Central Park. 

 This example, of which our illustration is a correct pic- 

 ture, was found embedded in a peaty material in the 

 town of Salisbury Mills, near Newburg, N. Y. At the 



Skeleton of the Mastodon Giganteus, in the American Museum of Natural History. 



plete preservation. The circumstance of several examples 

 having about them evidences of man's work is extremely 

 interesting. On one account it brings the date, though 

 greatly indefinite, to man's existence. We are, therefore, 

 able to say, man and mastodon are contemporaneous ; 

 but the date is obscure. We have not determined what 

 sort of man made those stone arrowheads which struck 

 the life out from the great carcases and lie among their 

 remains. We have not a knowledge of what sort ot man 

 made the charcoal which was found lying among the 

 partly burnt bones of a mastodon near the Mississippi 

 River ; but we do know that some man made the arrow- 

 heads. And we know also that no other than man is 

 capable of making charcoal, or even to make fire by 

 which it is formed. We are then able to say that the 



time of the discovery of these bones, in 1877, the 

 locality was cultivated as a potato field. It was, fifty 

 years since, a pond-hole of considerable size. In digging 

 a ditch about 20 inches deep, in order to drain the pond, 

 the workmen, at the depth of 14 inches, came upon a hard 

 substance, which proved to be one of the long bones of 

 the mastodon. 



Professor Whitfield, of the geological department of the 

 American Museum, in company with Major Brooks, of 

 Newburg, visited the place of discovery. He found the 

 situation to be " a swamp, bordered on the side nearest 

 the position of the skeleton, by a low hill of boulder 

 clay, a hard, blue clay, mixed with gravel, which slopes 

 down and passes under the peat of the swamp, and forms 

 the original bottom of the pond. Every evidence, as has 



