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and exaggerated collection of the bones in 1842 and 1843 in 
the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly,” is now (1846), he adds,* an 
almost complete skeleton of 44 the Mastodon giganteus , mounted 
in strict accordance with its natural proportions in the British 
Museum ; ” and a representation of it, copied from Owen, is the 
figure of the Mastodon on page 566 of the writer’s 6 Manual of 
Geology.’ 
It is pretty plain that Dr. Koch had not been trained to scien- 
tific investigation. This is equally obvious from his two pamph- 
lets on the 44 Hydrargos.” 
(1) The skeleton exhibited in New York in 1845, and de- 
scribed in the pamphlet of that date, was 114 feet long, and this 
was at least 35 feet longer than nature — the vertebrae gathered 
by him in Alabama having been all strung together into one 
long 44 Hydrargos,’ though belonging really, as Dr. Jeffries 
Wyman announced, to individuals of different ages, and, accord- 
ing to Muller, to at least two species ( Zeuglodon macrospon - 
dylus and Zeuglodon brachyspondylus of Muller). 
(2) The head was in part a piece of bad patchwork ; Dr. 
Wyman stating in his notes, made after a careful examination f 
that the cranium proper (the part over the brain) was made out 
of a single piece of bone without sutures, leading to the sup- 
position that it was not the true cranium ; an inference sustained, 
he says, by there being no foramen for the passage of the spinal 
marrow, and no larger space for the brain than that for the 
spinal cord on the upper side of some of the vertebrae ; and by 
the amount of cement, which left little or nothing of the under 
surface in sight. 
(3) The extremities of the so-called paddles were formed, 
says Dr. Wyman, of casts of 44 a species of Nautilus .” 
The Hydrargos or Hydrachen pamphlets hence do not re- 
quire any modification of the opinion that Dr. Koch had not 
been trained to scientific investigation. 
But on this point we have the opposing assertion of Dr. Koch. 
Being in a foreign country, where he had to make himself 
known, he opens his pamphlet of 1843 with the following- 
introduction of himself to the public : 
44 Previous to my commencing this treatise, I wish particu- 
larly to mention that I have not only devoted the greater part 
of my life to the theoretical study of natural • history, but have 
* “ History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds,” by Richard Owen, 
F.R.S., &c., London, 1846, p. 298. 
t u Proceedings Boston Nat. Hist. Soc.,” 1845, p. 65. In Dr. Wyman’s 
article, noticed by B. Silliman, jun., there is a figure of the remarkable 
head. 
