EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 365 



have been entombed shortly after the disappearance of the 

 Wisconsin ice sheet seems to indicate that this period was 

 not so very remote and has suggested the query: "Can it be 

 that Mammut americanum vanished from Connecticut 

 within a thousand, or at most a few thousand years, and 

 yet was unknown to the North American Indians?" The 

 total absence of any ivory implements from prehistoric 

 Indian graves appears, however, to be a fairly strong argu- 

 ment against the late existence of the mastodon in the region 

 inhabited by the Indians. 



This skeleton is that of a fully developed adult individual, 

 and the teeth, showing but slight signs of wear, indicate 

 that the animal, probably a male, was in the prime of life 

 at the time of its death. In size this Connecticut skeleton 

 occupies a place midway between that of the Warren masto- 

 don, which is larger, and that of the Otisville specimen, 

 mounted at Yale, The single tusk that was recovered has 

 a greatest circumference of 23 in., and is 8 ft. 10 in. long, 

 measured at the curve, the length between perpendiculars 

 being 6 ft. 3 in.* 



Remains of a mastodon found in 1705 on the Hudson 

 River thirty miles south of Albany were supposed by 

 Governor Dudley and the learned Cotton Mather to be the 

 remains of the giants or Nephelim of the antediluvian world. f 

 Subsequently, in 1740, the French explorers in making their 

 way down the Ohio River discovered numerous bones and 

 teeth of the mastodon and other animals at the Great Salt 

 Lick near Louisville. Some of these were sent to Paris and 

 so brought to the notice of European scientists. During the 

 nineteenth century many skeletons were disinterred, chiefly 

 from the peat bogs of Orange County, New York; the most 

 notable of these is the Warren mastodon described in a 



*Note by Prof. Richard S. Lull to article previously cited. 

 fThis paragraph has been contributed by Dr. W. B. Matthew. 



