ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF TI-IE MASTODOiV. 321 



been almost generally adopted, and has procured for the mastodon the 

 denomination of carnivorous elephant — less suited to it if possible than 

 that of mammoth. 



From that time the compilers have incessantly confounded the mam- , 

 moth of Siberia with the pretended mammoth of America, and accounts 

 the most intricate and confused have been the consequence of this mis- 

 take. This it is which now leads me to propose a new generic name 

 for the fossil animal of America, to replace these false denominations of 

 mammoth and carnivorous elephant, W'hich are only calculated to con- 

 vey ideas diametrically opposed to the reality. 



This measure is the more called for, as we shall soon have reason to 

 observe, that, according to the rules at present generally received in 

 zoology, tliis animal must be considered as forming a particular genus, 

 comprehending several other species. 



I have borrowed the name of mastodon from two Greek words, sig- 

 nifying teeth with papillse ; and, consequently, expressing the principal 

 character of this genus *. 



But it is only by a long course of labours, reflexions, and compari- 

 sons, that I have been enabled to arrive at the more accurate infor- 

 mation which I have now collected on this subject. The better part of 

 a. century has been spent in amassing it. 



The first mention made of the subject, dates from 1712. Dr. 

 Mather, in a Letter to Dr. Woodward (Philosophical Transactions, 

 vol. xxix, p. 62), tells us that some bones and teeth of a monstrous 

 size had been discovered in 1705, at Albany in New England, now in 

 the state of New York, near the river Hudson. 



He believed them to, be the bones of giants, and as tending to con- 

 firm the statements of Genesis, of the existence of ancient races of 

 giants. Nevertheless, it does not appear that this announcement was 

 attended v/ith any great consequence, for these bones were forgotten 

 for nearly thirty years. 



In 1739, a French officer, named Longueil, was sailing up the Ohio 

 ■ to reach the Mississippi, when some savages of his escort found at a 

 little distance from the river, on the borders of a morass, somes bones, 

 jaw-teeth, and tusks. In the following year, this same officer con- 

 veyed a thigh, the extremity of a tusk, and three jaw-teeth to Paris, 

 where they are still preserved. They are the first specimens of the 

 bones of this animal that were seen in Europe, and from the place in 

 which they were found, they have generally been known as the animal, 

 the elephant, and the mammoth of the Ohio ; although these bones have 

 been found in several other places, as we shall soon have occasion to 

 observe. 



The femur and the tusk were declared by Daubenton to belong to 

 the elephant, and the jaw- teeth to the hippopotamus. " For there is not 

 the slightest reason for suspecting," continued he, " that these teeth 

 and the tusk have been extracted from the same head ; or that they can 

 have formed part of the same skeleton with the femur last mentioned ; 

 such a supposition must necessarily lead us to infer the existence of an 

 unknown animal, with tusks similar to those of the elephant, and molar 



* Maaros (mamilla) and Olovs (dens). 



