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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



another, that the distinction between the two is an arbitrary and artificial 

 one, though convenient and even necessary for descriptive purposes. As 

 in other proboscideans, the teeth of the Mastodon consist only of incisors 

 and molars. The incisors, or tusks, are never more than a single pair in 

 each jaw. In the upper jaw they are always present, and of large size, but 

 apparently never so much curved as in some species of elephants, and they 

 often have longitudinal bands of enamel, more or less spirally disposed, 

 upon their surface, which are not met with in elephants. 



Lower incisors, never found in true elephants, are present throughout 

 life in some species of Mastodon, which have the symphysis of the lower 

 jaw greatly elongated to support them. In the common American species 

 — M. Ohioticus, Blum. — there were two tusks in the lower jaw in the young 

 of both sexes ; these were soon shed in the female, but one of them was 

 retained in the male. In other species no inferior tusks have been found ; 

 at all events, in adult life. 



Mastodon remains were first discovered at Albany, N. Y., and described 

 by Dr. Mather in the Philosophical Transactions for 1712. The first 

 specimens seen in Europe were found thirty years after by Lonqueil, on 

 the edge of a 'marsh near the Ohio River, and hence the French called the 

 unknown creature, " The animal of the Ohio." Bones have since been 

 found as high as 70° north, but they mainly frequented a more temperate 

 zone ; and we have no evidence that any species was specially fitted like 

 the Mammoth to brave the rigors of an Arctic winter. The remains occur 

 chiefly in the United States, Europe, and India. They must have roamed 

 in considerable numbers among the hills and valleys of the interior states 

 of this country, for the teeth and portions of the bones of many individ- 

 uals have been found. Several years ago some large skeletons of the Mas- 

 todon were dug up in a marsh near Newburgh, N. Y. The late Dr. J. C. 

 Warren, of Boston, obtained one of them, which he set up in his private 

 museum. It is eleven feet high, and seventeen feet long to the base of the 

 tail. The length of the tusks is twelve feet, of which two and one-half 

 feet are inserted in the socket. The estimated height of the animal when 

 living was from twelve to thirteen feet, and the whole length, adding seven 

 feet for the horizontal projection of the tusks, from twenty-four to twenty- 

 five feet. Remains of the undigested food were found between his ribs,* 

 showing that he lived in part on spruce and fir trees. The range of the 

 genus Mastodon in time was from the middle of the Miocene period to the 

 end of the Pliocene in the Old World, when he became extinct; but in 

 America several species, especially the best known, owing to the abundance 

 of its remains, which has been variously called M. Ohioticus, M. Ameri- 



