222 
EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
these accounts refer to tufts of hair — in one case three inches 
long. , 
The great skeleton of Mastodon americanus already referred 
to was purchased by the trustees of the British Museum, of 
Mr. Albert Koch, a well-known collector of fossil remains, who 
had exhibited it in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in 1842 and 
1843, under the name of “ the Missouri Leviathan,” an enormous 
and ill-constructed monster, made up of the bones of this 
skeleton, together with many belonging to other individuals, in 
such a way as to horrify an anatomist and appeal all the more 
forcibly to the imagination of the public. From this hetero- 
geneous assemblage of bones those belonging to the same animal 
have now been selected and articulated in their proper places. 
The height of this specimen is nine feet and a half, and the total 
length about eighteen feet. 
According to Mr. Koch, the remains exhibited by him were 
found in alluvial deposits on the banks of a small tributary 
of the Osage River, in Benton County, Missouri. The bones 
were embedded in a brown, sandy deposit, full of vegetable 
matter, in which were recognised remains of the cypress, tropical 
cane, swamp moss, etc., and this was covered by blue clay and 
gravel to a thickness of about fifteen feet. Mr. Koch personally 
assured Dr. Mantell that an Indian flint arrow-head was found 
beneath the leg-bones of this skeleton, and that four similar 
weapons were embedded in the same stratum. He declared that 
he took them out of the bed with his own hands. 
In the Pier-case (No. 38), near the Mastodon americanus, may 
be seen fifteen heads and jaws, together with other parts of the 
skeleton, mostly obtained from the same locality, but some of 
them came from the “ Big Bone Lick,” Kentucky. 
A fine specimen, obtained from a marsh near Newburgh, by 
Dr. Warren, measured eleven feet in height, and seventeen in 
length, while the tusks were nearly ten feet long, not including 
the portion in the long sockets of the cranium. Twenty-six 
species of Mastodon are known. 
