168 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



merely bowing inwards, occasionally curving upwards to 

 form a half circle ; they were never so long as the largest 

 mammoth tusks, but to make up for this they were a 

 shade stouter for their length. As the mastodon ranged 

 well to the north it is fair to suppose that he may have 

 been covered with long hair, a supposition that seems to 

 be borne out by the discovery, noted by Rembrandt 

 Peale, of a mass of long, coarse, woolly hair buried in one 

 of the swamps of Ulster County, New York. 



As for the size of the mastodon, this, like that of the 

 mammoth, is popularly much overestimated, and it is 

 more than doubtful if any attained the height of a full- 

 grown Asiatic elephant. The largest femur, or thigh- 

 bone, that has come under the writer's notice was one he 

 measured as it lay in the earth at Kimmswick, and this 

 was just four feet long, three inches shorter than the 

 thigh-bone of Jumbo. Several of the largest thigh- 

 bones measured show so striking an unanimity in size, 

 between 46 and 47 inches in length, that we may be 

 pretty sure they represent the average old "bull" 

 mastodon, and if we say that these animals stood ten 

 feet high we are probably doing them full justice. An 

 occasional tusk reaches a length of nine feet, but seven 

 or eight is the usual size, with a diameter of as many 

 inches, and this is no larger than the tusks of the African 

 elephant would grow if they had a chance. It is painful 

 to be obliged to scale down the mastodon as we have 

 just done the mammoth, but if any reader knows of 

 specimens larger than those noted, he should by all 

 means publish their measurements. ^ 



'As skeletons are sometimes mounted, they stand a full foot or more 

 higher at the shoulders than the animal stood in life, this being caused by 

 raising the body until the shoulder-blades are far below the tips of the 

 vertebrae, a position they could never assume in life. 



