58 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



point of Wallachia. Galacz ships the wheat of the upper valley of the Danube. 

 Budapest is the central point of Hungary, as Vienna is of Austria. It costs nearly 

 as much to carry wheat from Brody to Lemberg, 58 miles (no railway), as it does 

 from Chicago to Liverpool. From Vienna to Trieste is about 250 miles by rail; 

 in cost of transportation it is further than from Calcutta to England around the 

 Cape. California can easily compete with Hungary in the markets of Western 

 Europe, the cost of raising the wheat being the same. 



THE MASTODON IN RECENT TIMES. 



Prof John Collett, Ph. D., state geologist of Indiana, gives some statistics in 

 relation to the Mastodon, that dispels the notion that these animals did not live in 

 recent times. Archseologists who argue the great antiquity of man upon this 

 planet, based upon the fact that his remains have been found with those of the 

 Mastodon, will be compelled to seek other lines of proof for their theory. We 

 quote from page 385, geological report for 1880. Prof. Collett says: 



Of the thirty individual specimens of the remains of the Mastodon {Masto- 

 don giganteus) found in this state, in almost every case a very considerable part 

 of the skeleton of each animal proved to be in a greater of less condition of decay. 

 The remains have always been discovered in marshes, ponds or other miry places, 

 indicating, at once, the cause of the death of the animal and the reason of the 

 preservation of the bones from decay. Spots of ground in this condition, are 

 found at the summit of the glacial drift or in "old beds" of rivers which have 

 adopted a shorter route and lower level, consequently their date does not reach 

 beyond the most recent changes of the earth's surface ; in fact, their existence 

 was so late that the only query is, why did they become extinct? 



A skeleton was discovered in excavating the bed of the canal a few miles 

 north of Covington, Fountain county, bedded in wet peat. The teeth were in 

 good preservation, and Mr. Perrin Kent states that when the larger bones were 

 cut open the marrow, still preserved, was utiHzed by the bog cutters to " grease" 

 their boots, and that chunks of sperm-like substance 2^ to 3 inches in diameter 

 (adipocere) occupied the place of the kidney fat of the monster. During the 

 past summer of 1880 an almost complete skeleton of a mastodon was found six 

 miles northwest from Hoopston, Iriquois Co., 111., which goes far to settle definite- 

 ly that it was not only a recent animal, but that it survived until the life and veg- 

 etation of to-day prevailed. The tusks formed each a full quarter of a circle, were 

 nine feet long, twenty-two inches in circumference at the base, and in their water- 

 soaked condition weighed 175 pounds. The lower jaw was well-preserved with a 

 full set of magnificent teeth, and is nearly three feet long. The teeth, as usual, 

 were thickly enameled, and weighed each from four to five pounds. The leg 

 bones, when joined at the knee, made a total length of five and a half feet, indi- 

 cating that the animal was no less than eleven feet high, and from fifteen to six- 

 teen feet from brow to rump. On inspecting the remains closely, a mass of fi- 



