204 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



of greater length than the facts justify. After a personal 

 and critical examination of the specimen, however, I feel 

 bound to say that this prodigiously elongated creature, 

 that visitors have so long seen coiled about one of the 

 apartments of the museum, is as near a representation of 

 the truth of nature as is likely to be attained. The skele- 

 ton possesses one hundred and eighteen vertebrae, of which 

 ninety-one are genuine, and twenty-one factitious. The 

 neck embraces six vertebras. There are thirty-six pairs of 

 ribs. The cranium is six feet long ; the jaws are armed 

 each with five grinding teeth on each side, preceded by two 

 premolars and one incisor on each side of the middle. The 

 epiphyses of the vertebrae — that is, their detached extrem- 

 ities — being unconsolidated with the bodies of the verte- 

 bras, prove that the individual was still immature. This 

 examination was kindly authorized by Col. Wood, the pro- 

 prietor. We are indebted to Dr. Koch, of St. Louis, for the 

 first restoration of the Zeuglodon, a specimen of which was 

 exhibited, a number of years ago, under the name of Hy- 

 drarchos, or Water-king, in Barnum's Museum in New 

 York. [See Note XIII.] 



Far toward the northwest, on the tributaries of the Up- 

 per Missouri, were the cemeteries of American quadrupeds. 

 The shores of the great inland seas already described seem 

 to have been the favorite haunts of the dominant tribes of 

 the continent, while swarms of humbler creatures bathed 

 in their waters, or burrowed in the mud at the bottom. At 

 first these waters possessed all the saltness of the sea of 

 which they were the residuum; but, by degrees, the perpet- 

 ual drainage, replaced only by fresh waters from the clouds, 

 changed them first to a brackish, and then to a fresh condi- 

 tion. This progressive change is shoA^n by the varying 

 nature of the fossil remains imbedded in the sediments. At 

 the bottom we find the relics of marine animals ; in the 



