WAS MAN A CONTEMPORARY OF THE MAMMOTH? 
289 
muscle so as to char the bones ; and an Indian’s appetite would 
have been pretty sure to have stopped the cooking short of this 
charring. The charring might have been done very long after 
the miring and death of the animal, and the facts be all as 
they are reported. The remark that “ the greater portion of 
the bones had been more or less burned by fire” favours the 
idea that the fire was made about the bones at some time 
between the era of the Mastodon and the present time, and 
not about the living body. 
The failure to repeat, in either of the later accounts, the 
early statements respecting the “large pieces of skin that 
appeared like fresh tanned sole-leather,” and the “ sinews and 
arteries plain to be seen on the earth and rocks,” shows that 
he afterwards doubted and rejected this part of his observa- 
tions ; and this unavoidably suggests some doubt as to the 
other points ; even to questioning whether the charring was 
not in fact only a blackening in colour due to burial in the 
marsh — a very common effect from such a cause ; whether the 
crumbling was not a result of that natural decay which so 
generally befalls old bones ; and whether the stone implements 
found were not small oblong stones of Nature’s chipping or 
polishing. 
Thus stands the evidence. If the statements respecting the 
deposits had been published by a good geologist with no more 
of detail, and without any special effort afterwards to make all 
things positive, there would be some room for doubt, consider- 
ing the many chances of error that exist. But in the present 
case they were not made by a good geologist ; they were not 
made by one trained to investigation, or to habits of precise 
statement ; nor by one who had a knowledge of any depart- 
ment of science ; nor by one whose sound common sense was 
so obvious a characteristic as to demand consideration for his 
opinions and statements ; nor by one wholly free from pretence 
and sham. 
Taking all things that have been reviewed into consideration, 
I think there is sufficient reason for regarding Dr. Koch’s evi- 
dence of the contemporaneity of Man and the Mastodon as very 
doubtful. It is to be hoped that the geologists of the Missouri 
Geological Survey now in progress will succeed in settling the 
question positively. 
The contemporaneity claimed will probably be shown to be 
true for North America by future discoveries if not already so 
established ; for Man existed in Europe long before the extinc- 
tion of the American Mastodon. — Silliman's American Jour- 
nal, May 1875. 
VOL. xiv. — NO. LVI. 
u 
