348 ON THE FOSSIL BOKES OF FACUYDERMATOUS QUADllUl'EDS, 



structure of its grinders are sufficient to point it out as a distinct 

 species from the elephant ; that it fed on the same substances as 

 the hippopotamus and the wild boar, giving the preference to 

 the roots and other coarse parts of vegetables; that this sort of 

 nutriment must have attracted it towards boggy and marshy lands; 

 tliat, neTcrtheless, it was not formed to swim or live in the water, like 

 the hippopotamus, but that it was a real terrestrial animal ; that its 

 bones are more abundant in North America than elsewhere ; that it 

 may be, that they belong exclusively to that country ; that they are 

 in a better state of preservation, and fresher than any of the fossil 

 bones known to us ; and that, nevertheless, theie is not the slightest 

 proof, the slightest authentic testimony, sufficient to convince us that 

 there does exist either in America or elsewhere, a single animal of this 

 species: for the different announcements which we have seen from 

 time to-time, touching the living mastodons, which may have been 

 seen in the woods or the high lands of that vast continent, have never 

 been confirmed, and must be accounted as mere fables. 



Addition. 



On the great Mastodon, and its existence on the ancient Continent. 



In spite of the testimony of M. Pallas, and of the tooth given to 

 BufFon, by M. Vergennes, stated to have come from Little Tartary, 

 I still entertained doubts of the great mastodon's remains, though so 

 abundant in America, having been found in Europe. 



But this uncertainty has been dissipated since the period that the 

 Abbe Borson, Professor of Mineralogy at Turin, has sent me a plaster 

 cast of a tooth found in the neighbourhood of Asti, in the same place 

 where so many teeth of the narrow toothed mastodon had been dis- 

 covered. Its crown is 0,18 long, and 0,09 broad. 



We may there observe four transverse crests, each divided into two 

 hillocks ; the second of which, though a little worn, presents the com- 

 mencement of a lozenge. Nevertheless, these crests appeared tome 

 to be a little more oblique thaa in those of America. Could this too 

 have been another species ? * 



SECTION II. 



ON A MASTODON LESS THAN THAT OF OHIO, TO WHICH I HAVE GIVEN THE 

 NAME OF THE NAIlKOVv^ TOOTHED MASTODON. 



Yv^E have seen in the preceding section, that the first engraving of 

 a great molar of Ohio is that published by Guettard in 1752; but 

 these teeth, and the animal to which they belonged, did not acquire 



* Some new teeth discovered more recently in Piedmont, Switzerland, and very 

 lately in France, in the department of the Haute-Saone, would seem to confirm this 

 suspicion of Cuvier, that the new specimen sent by M. Borson belongs to a new 

 species, and would leave still undecided the question of the existence of the great 

 mastodon ou the old continent. 



