270 FOSSIL MASTODON. [CHAP. XL. 



out the rich mud from a small pond newly drained. There were 

 no less than six skeletons, five of them lying together, and the 

 sixth and largest about ten feet apart from the rest. A large 

 portion of the bones crumbled to pieces as soon as they were 

 exposed to the air, but nearly the whole of the separate specimen 

 was preserved. Dr. John Jackson called my attention to the in 

 teresting fact that this perfect skeleton proved the correctness of 

 Cuvier s conjecture respecting this extinct animal, namely, that 

 it had twenty ribs, like the elephant, although no more than nine 

 teen had ever been previously found. From the clay in the in 

 terior within the ribs, just where the contents of the stomach 

 might naturally have been looked for, seven bushels of vegetable 

 matter had been extracted ; and Professor Webster, of Harvard 

 College, had the kindness to present me with some of it, which 

 has since been microscopically examined for me in London by 

 Mr. A. Henfrey, of the Geological Survey. He informs me that 

 it consists of pieces of the small twigs of a coniferous tree of the 

 cypress family ; and they resemble in structure the young shoots 

 of the white cedar ( Thuja occidentalis), still a native of North 

 America, on which, therefore, we may conclude that the masto 

 don fed. 



But a still nobler specimen of this great proboscidian quadru 

 ped was exhumed in August, 1845, in the town of Newburg, 

 New York, and purchased by Dr. John C. Warren, Professor of 

 Anatomy in Harvard University. It is the most complete, and, 

 perhaps, the largest ever met with. The bones contain a consid 

 erable proportion of their original gelatine, and are firm in text 

 ure. The tusks, when discovered, were ten feet long ; but the 

 larger part of them had decomposed, and could not be preserved. 

 The length of the skeleton was twenty-five feet, and its height 

 twelve feet, the anchylosing of the two last ribs on the right side 

 affording the comparative anatomist a true guage for the space 

 occupied by the intervertebrate substance, so as to enable him to 

 form a correct estimate of the entire length. Dr. Warren gave 

 me an excellent Daguerreotype of this skeleton for Mr. Clift, of 

 the College of Surgeons in London. 



Nothing is more remarkable than the large proportion of ani- 



