220 
EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
D on plan). It belonged to Elephas ganesa, one of the largest 
of all the fossil elephants known. The total length of the 
cranium and tusks is fourteen feet, and the tusks alone measure 
ten feet six inches in length ! This remarkable specimen was 
presented by Sir William Erskine Baker, K.C.B. 
But to return to our Mastodon. It was early in the eighteenth 
century that the teeth and bones of the Mastodon were first 
described,^ and it is curious to observe how differently scientific 
discoveries were regarded in those days ; for this society of 
learned men published in these Transactions a letter from Dr. 
Mather to Dr. Woodward, in which the former gives an 
account of a large work in manuscript, but does not name the 
author. This book, which appears to have been a commentary 
on the Bible^ Dr. Mather recommends “ to the patronage of 
some generous Moecenas to promote the publication of it,” and 
transcribes, as a specimen, a passage announcing the discovery 
at Albany, now the capital of New York State, in the year 1705, 
of enormous bones and teeth. These relics he considered to 
belong to a former race of giants, and appeals to them in con- 
firmation of Genesis vi. 4 (“ The Nephilim (giants) were in the 
earth in those days ”). 
Portions of the skeleton of Mastodon, discovered in 1801, were 
sent to England and France, and two complete specimens were 
at length put together in America. One of these was exhibited 
as a Mammoth, in Bristol and London, by Mr. C. W. Peale, a 
naturalist, by whom they were found in marly clay on the banks 
of the Hudson, near Newburgh, in the State of New York. 
Previous to this, in 1739, a French officer, M. de Longueil, 
traversed the virgin forests bordering on the river Ohio, in order 
to reach the Mississippi, and the Indians who escorted him 
accidentally discovered, on the borders of a marsh, various 
bones, some of which seemed to be those of unknown animals. 
In this turfy marsh, known as the Big Bone Lick, or Salt Lick, in 
^ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society^ I7I4» vol. xxix, 
