BONES OP THE MASTODON RECENT. 



333 



of the present day subsist. Whatever resemblance certain of these 

 species bear to those of existing species, the general mass of this 

 population had a different character ; the greater part of the races 

 which composed it have been utterly destroyed. Among all these 

 mammiferous animals, the greater number of which have their con- 

 geners living at the present day, there has not been found a single 

 bone or tooth of any species of ape or monkey. Nor is there any 

 trace of man : all the human bones which have been found, along 

 with those of which we have been speaking, have occurred acciden- 

 tally ; and their number besides is exceedingly small, which assured- 

 ly would not have been the case, if men had been then setded in the 

 countries which these animals inhabited."'^ When Cuvier published 

 the first edition of his Recherches sur les Ossemensfossiles, he too hasti- 

 ly concluded, that we were already acquainted with all the existing 

 species of large land quadrupeds ; and he hence inferred, that it was 

 highly improbable that any of the species of unknown quadrupeds, 

 whose bones are found in diluvial soils, should be still living. Since 

 that time a large species of living tapir has been found in the East In- 

 dies; and other discoveries of new quadrupeds have been made : hence 

 we cannot conclude with absolute certainty, that all the species of 

 unknown fossil quadrupeds are extinct, though it seems highly prob- 

 able that the greater number of the races have perished. The ani- 

 mals whose bones are found in peat bogs and marshes, such as the 

 elk in Ireland, and the great mastodon in Kentucky, may, I conceive 

 be referred with much probability to a more recent epoch, than that 

 in which the diluvial beds were deposited. 



Skeletons, both of the Irish elk and the great American mastodon, 

 have been fouud erect in peat bogs and marshes, which proves that 

 the surface of the ground has undergone litde change since the ani- 

 mals perished ; and the further circumstance of the flesh and stom- 

 ach of the mastodon being found near the surface, not protected, 

 like the bodies of the elephant and rhinoceros found in Siberia, by 

 ice, seems opposed to the general belief in the high antiquity of these 

 animal remains ; and it is admitted by Cuvier, that they are in bet- 

 ter preservation than any other fossil bones. The quadrupeds whose 

 bones are buried in beds of clay, sand or gravel, or accumulated in 

 caverns, undoubtedly lived in a very remote period, and under a 

 different condition of our planet to the present one. The northern 

 parts of Europe seem now incapable of supporting the immense 

 number of elephants, which have formerly spread over all the val- 

 leys bordering the Frozen Ocean. Were we to admit that the tem- 

 perature of the earth was then higher than at present, which the re- 

 mains of palms and other tropical plants found in the northern lati- 



* For an account of human bones, found in caverns mixed with the bones of 

 extinct species, see the preceding Chaptex\ 



