THE 



MASTODON. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



The first account we have of the existence of Mastodon bones in this country 



is found in the volume of the " Transactions of the Royal Society of London," 



for the year 1714. This volume contains a short article, in which it is said 



that a letter or letters had been written by Dr. Cotton Mather, of Boston, to 



John Woodward, M.D., and Richard Waller, Esq., S. R. Sec, in England, 



giving a description of some' large bones discovered in 1705, at Claver- 



ack, about thirty miles south of Albany, in the State of New York. The 



bones were two large teeth (one of them weighing more than four pounds), 



and a thigh bone said to be seventeen feet long. One of the teeth 



was sent to the city of New York; the other specimens soon crumbled 



into pieces, and were probably never seen by any one capable of giving an 



exact account of them. — (A copy of this interesting article will be found 



in Appendix A.) 



We hear nothing more on this subject till the year 1740, when De 



Longueil, a French traveller, discovered bones at the Salt Lick in Ohio, 

 l 



