160 THE TIME OF THE MAMMOTHS. 
or other similar localities in the West, supplied this need, and 
here came, on an annual pilgrimage, all the large animals of 
the country. When this region was first occupied by the 
whites the bones of elephants and mastodons were found in 
abundance upon the surface, or buried beneath a thin covering 
of mould around the various springs of the first of these 
localities. For nearly half a century they supplied every 
strolling curiosity hunter with relies, besides furnishing the 
remarkably perfect specimen in the British Museum, as well 
as half a dozen less complete skeletons. There remain to 
this day traces of the ancient paths on which at the time the 
country was settled the deer and buffalo thronged to their 
favorite watering place. These traces, broader than a wide 
bridle path and worn to the depth of several feet, were fifty 
years ago the natural roads, leading from great distances, 
down to the springs. The buffalo evidently fell into the 
paths made by their predecessors, the elephants; for along 
the courses of these paths the mammoth remains seem most 
abundant. Although some of the remains of the Hlephas 
primigenius give evidences of extreme antiquity, others 
seem comparatively very recent. The author has a tooth of 
this species which came from the uppermost terrace of the 
alluvial plain opposite Cincinnati, at a point over sixty feet 
from the surface. This tooth could not have been placed in 
its position less than fifty thousand years ago. Since the 
deposition of the beds where it lay the Ohio has deepened 
its rock channel over fifty feet, and shrunk to the mere 
shadow of the mighty stream which flowed through its valley 
when it bore the melting ice of the drift period. On the 
other hand some of the remains of the same species, such 
as those which lie upon the surface at Big Bone Lick, are so 
well preserved as to seem not much more ancient than the 
buffalo bones which are found above them. There is a great 
difficulty in determining the relative antiquity of the two 
elephants which have existed in the United States since the 
glacial period. The Zlephas primigenius (if the species 
