158 THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. II. 



cement, as in the elephant ; from this form of the crown 

 of the tooth the animal to which it belonged has received 

 the name of mastodon, signifying mammillary tooth. These 

 teeth have no relation whatever to those of the carnivora ; for 

 though they have an external investment of enamel as in 

 the teeth of the tiger, they are destitute of the longitudinal,- 

 serrated, cutting edge ; and in those which are worn, the pro- 

 tuberances become truncated into a lozenge form. This 

 structure is fitted for the grinding and mastication of tough 

 and hard vegetable substances . The bones and teeth of the 

 mastodon have been found throughout the plains of North 

 America, from north of Lake Erie to as far south as 

 Charleston in South Carolina ; they have also been dis- 

 covered on the Continent, and in the Crag of England, and 

 in several parts of India. Here are examples from the banks 

 of the Ohio and Hudson; and from Big-bone Lick ; one 

 of these is a perfect tooth of a young aninal ; but this 

 specimen must have belonged to a very old one, for the 

 grinding surface is worn almost flat by use. 



These remains are found in marl, beneath peat bogs, at 

 moderate depths, and with no marks of attrition ; it is 

 therefore evident that the animals lived and died in the 

 country where their relics are entombed. 



In the suburbs of Rochester (U. S.) many bones of 

 Mastodons were dug up from a bed of clay which con- 

 tained numerous shells of existing river species (pla- 

 norbis, valvata, linmea, cyclas, &c). The skeletons of 

 the great mastodon found in the bogs of Louisiana were 

 in a vertical position, as if they had sunk in the mire ; and 

 one discovered imbedded in black earth, in New Jersey, 

 forty miles to the south of New York, was in the same 

 position the head being on a level with the surface of the 

 soil. There is now an entire skeleton of the mastodon in 

 the British Museum. From this specimen it appears that 

 the great mastodon of the Ohio was not unlike the elephant 

 in its general outline, though somewhat longer and thicker. 



