162 NATURAL HISTOID 



nished by the Indians, which, allowing for inadequate termi- 

 nology, incorrectness in tradition and translation from the 

 native dialects to English, leaves a surprisingly applicable pic- 

 ture to a species of Megatherida, perhaps the Jeffersonian 

 Megalonyx. Thecolossal Elk, another name lor the Mastodon, 

 or I'cre aux Beeufs, points ou1 that with designations of existing 

 species the Indians describe extinct animals with a precision 

 which, in the .state of their information, nothing but traditionary 

 recollection of their real structure could have furnished. We 

 remember seeing, in the United States, a rib, supposed to have 

 belonged to a fossil ungulate species, which bore undeniable 

 marks of a wound, apparently given by some sharp instrument 

 of human invention. 



Tradition, in the East Indies, similarly mentions the Aula, 

 or Auloc, Elephant-horse, a solid, ungulated proboscidean, sup- 

 posed to be figured in Kindersley's specimens of Hindoo litera- 

 ture, where the Macaira, represented in Budha zodiacs, is 

 again seen beneath the monster horse, and, still more singu- 

 larly, bears the same form in a Peruvian bas-relief, always 

 resembling the presumed figure of Dinotherhtm gigayiteum, or, 

 rather, with the characters of an aquatic proboscidean. 



The Uri and Bisontes, of the Hercynian Forest, have disap- 

 peared, and the Machlis of Csesar, if it was identical with the 

 Sech and Schelch, of the middle ages, and the same as the 

 Irish Elk, by Breton bards transmuted into the Questing beast 

 of romance, was a real existing species, so late as the eighth 

 century, and, perhaps, even to the fifteenth. It is, neverthe- 

 less, an extinct animal, and its bones are found under circum- 

 stances similar to the Megatherium of America, and nearly in 

 the same chemical condition. Next, we have the exuviae of 

 existing species, exclusive of Horse, Beaver, &c. The Elk is 

 not unfrequently found among those of extinct animals, in the 

 same regions where that ruminant now resides; and we ask by 

 what theory, compatible with the sentence pronounced upon 

 others, these are to be disposed of? 



