Ch. XII.] MASTODOX GIGAXTETJS. 167 



nianmialiau fauna, together with nearly all the invertebrata, lived 

 through the ages of intense cold. 



That in the United States, the Mastodon giganteus was very abundant 

 after the drift period is evident from the fact that entire skeletons of this 

 animal are met ■with in bogs and lacustrine deposits occupying hollows 

 in the drift. They sometimes occur in the bottom even of small ponds 

 recently drained by the agriculturist for the sake of the shell marl. I ex- 

 amined one of these spots at Geneseo in the state of New York, from 

 which the bones, skull, and tusk of a Mastodon had been procured in 

 the marl below a layer of black peaty earth, and ascertained that all the 

 associated freshwater and land shells were of a species now common in 

 the same district. They consisted of several species of Lymnea, of Pla- 

 norbis bicarinatus, Physa heterostrojika, &c. 



In 1845 no less than six skeletons of the same species of Mastodon 

 were found in Warren county, New Jersey, 6 feet below the surface, by 

 a farmer who was digging out the rich mud from a small pond which 

 he had drained. Five of these skeletons were lying together, and a large 

 part of the bones crumbled to pieces as soon as they were exposed to the 

 air. But nearly the whole of the other skeleton, which lay about 10 

 feet apart from the rest, was preserved entire, and proved the correctness 

 of Cuviers conjecture respecting this extinct animal, namely, that it 

 had twenty ribs like the living elephant. From the clay in the interior 

 within the ribs, just where the contents of the stomach might naturally 

 have been looked for, seven bushels of vegetable matter were extracted. 

 I submitted some of this matter to Mr. A. Henfrey, of London, for 

 microscopic examination, and he informs me that it consists of pieces of 

 small twigs of a coniferous tree of the Cypress family, probably the young- 

 shoots of the white cedar, Thuja occidentalism still a native of North 

 America, on which therefore Ave may conclude that this extinct Mastodon 

 once fed. 



Another specimen of the same quadruped, the most complete and 

 probably the largest ever found, was exhumed in 1845 in the town of 

 Newburg, New York, the length of the skeleton being 25 feet, and its 

 height 12 feet. The anchylosing of the last two ribs on the right side 

 afforded Dr. John C. Warren a true gauge for the space occupied by the 

 intervertebrate substance, so as to enable him to form a correct estimate 

 of the entire length. The tusks when discovered were 10 feet long, but 

 a part only could be preserved. The large proportion of animal matter 

 in the tusk, teeth, and bones of some of these fossil mammalia is truly 

 astonishing. It amounts in some cases, as Dr. C. T. Jackson has ascer- 

 tained by analysis, to 27 per cent., so that when all the earthy ingre- 

 dients are removed by acids, the form of the bone remains as perfect, 

 and the mass of animal matter is almost as firm, as in a recent bone 

 subjected to similar treatment. 



It would be rash, however to infer from such data that these quadru- 

 peds were mired in modern times, unless we use that term strictly in a 

 geological sense. I have shown that there is a fluviatile deposit in the 



