436 
at a comparatively recent period, since the Atlantic was 
inhabited by the existing species of marine testacea, there 
was an upheaving and laying dry of the bed of the ocean in 
this region. The new land supported forests in which the 
Megatherium, Mylodon, Mastodon, Mammoth, a species of 
horse, different from the common one, and other quadrupeds 
lived, and were occasionally buried in swamps.* At Big-bone 
Lick, in Kentucky alone, the bones of not less than one 
hundred Mastodons, and Mammoths, besides those of the 
Stag, Horse, Megalonyx, and Bison, have been obtained 
from black marl containing recent terrestial and fresh-water 
shells ; and it is impossible to view this plain without at once 
concluding that it has remained unchanged in all its prin- 
cipal features from the period when the extinct quadrupeds 
inhabited the banks of the Ohio and its tributaries.! 
In 1820, an entire skeleton of the great Mastodon was 
found in a marl pit at Horstead, near Norwich, lying on its 
side, stretched out on the surface of the marl, beneath the 
gravel, and, from the statement of the pitmen, when first 
discovered, was very soft, and could have been " spread like 
butter," the muscular portion of the animal having been con- 
verted into adipocere.} Now, although the Mastodons are 
generally allowed to have lived in a preceding age to the 
Mammoth, as their remains are never found associated with 
the latter, still the fact here recorded, taken in connexion 
with those just enumerated as having occurred in America, 
justifies the supposition that the termination of the Mastodon 
epoch. is less ancient than is generally supposed. 
Mr. Strickland found, with the bones of the Hippopo- 
tamus at Burfield, in Essex, twenty-four species of land and 
fresh-water shells, nineteen of which are still living in the 
neighbourhood, proving that no very material change has 
* Travels in North America, vol. i., page 164. + Vol. ii., p. 65. 
f Fairhome's Geology of Scripture, p. 281. 
