ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS.—DISTRIBUTION. 
75 
statement, Orton refers to Mastodon and Mammoth remains having been found asso¬ 
ciated in an old forest-bed, some twenty to forty feet below the present level of the 
Ohio . 1 This opinion resolves itself into a matter of careful observation, so that unless 
critical attention had been paid to the study of Elephantine remains, associated with 
much practical experience in the manipulation of specimens, the molars of E. primigenius 
might have been mistaken for those of its ally, the American Elephant. 
The question as to the North-American distribution of the Mammoth would, there¬ 
fore, appear at present not to be precisely determined; it seems necessary, therefore, to 
refer more fully to the materials on which European palaeontologists have based their 
conclusions. Cuvier, Owen, De Blainville, and Palconer confirm each other’s diagnosis 
from the specimens in the Institute of France, British Museum, Museum of the 
Royal College of Surgeons of England, and Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, 
and I have carefully, with the exception of the Erench, examined all the specimens. 
They are said to be from various parts of the United States, to wit, Ohio (Big Bone 
Lick), Kentucky, Missouri, Carolina, and Texas. 
All show precisely the same mineral characters, being black and deeply stained like 
the remains of Mastodon from Ohio, just as if they had lain long in peat. The dental 
characters are precisely similar to, and indistinguishable from crowns of Arctic molars, 
that is, they display the very thin enamel and croicded discs which, with few exceptions, 
characterise the molars from Northern Asia and Arctic America. 
Now, if a fraud had been practised, it must have been extensive, from the great 
numbers of specimens in the English and French museums. Moreover, the donations to 
the French Institute, we are told by Cuvier, were made by the President of the United 
States, 2 but the English specimens seemed to have been acquired by purchase. 3 
The discovery, in 1863, in “ sand and gravel’’ at Hamilton, on the banks of Lake 
Ontario, of molars and mandibles of Elephants has been referred to by Mr. Billings 
and by Falconer. 4 The former arrived at an opinion that the species was distinct from 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1877.” Dana is of opinion that the Canadian 
Elephant was the Mammoth—‘ Manual of Geology,’ p. 563. 
1 ‘ Report on the Geol. Survey of Ohio,’ vol. i, p. 428. It is possible, however, that this Elephant 
may have been E. Columbi. 
° ‘ Os9emens Fossiles,’ vol. ii, p. 148, pi. xv, figs. 9 and 11. 
3 I am indebted to my friend Professor Flower, LL.D., for the following record relating to the 
purchase of the specimens for the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. A printed list 
is preserved in the Library of the College of the sale, which took place at Stevens’s Auction Rooms in the 
year 1835. Referring to the Elephant’s teeth and bones it is stated that the “bones were said to be 
found tweniy-two feet below the surface at Big Bone Lick, in Boone County, State of Kentucky, in the 
autumn of 1830, dug up by B. Finnel and others. Big Bone Lick lies back from the Ohio River about 
ten or twelve miles, and about sixty miles below Cincinnati. Brought from North America by Mr. 
Inghan, of Kentucky.” 
4 ‘ Geological Survey of Canada,’ p. 914, figs. 495 to 498 ; Falconer, ‘ Pal. Mem.,’ vol. ii, 239. 
