the record for mammoth tusks. The greatest development of tusks
occurred in Elephas ganesa, a species found in Pliocene deposits of the
Siwalik Hills, India. This species appears not to have exceeded the
existing elephant in bulk, but the tusks are twelve feet nine inches
long, and two feet two inches in circumference. How the animal ever
carried them is a mystery, both on account of their size and their
enormous leverage. As for teeth, an upper grinder of Elephas columbi in
the United States National Museum is ten and one-half inches high, nine
inches wide, the grinding face being eight by five inches. This tooth,
which is unusually perfect, retaining the outer covering of cement, came
from Afton, Indian Territory, and weighs a little over fifteen pounds.
The lower tooth, shown in Fig. 38, is twelve inches long, and the
grinding face is nine by three and one-half inches; this is also from
Elephas columbi. Grinders of the Northern Mammoth are smaller, and the
plates of enamel thinner, and closer to one another. Mr. F. E. Andrews,
of Gunsight, Texas, reports having found a femur, or thigh-bone five
feet four inches long, and a humerus measuring four feet three inches,
these being the largest bones on record indicating an animal fourteen
feet high._
_There is a vast amount of literature relating to the mammoth, some of
it very untrustworthy. A list of all discoveries of specimens in the
flesh is given by Nordenskiold in "The Voyage of the Vega" and "The
Mammoth and the Flood" by Sir Henry Howorth, is a mine of information.
Mr. Townsend's "Alaska Live-Mammoth Story" may be found in "Forest and
Stream" for August 14, 1897._
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--The Mammoth as Engraved by a Primitive Artist
on a Piece of Mammoth Tusk.]
XI
THE MASTODON
"_... who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength?_"
The name mastodon is given to a number of species of fossil elephants
differing from the true elephants, of which the mammoth is an example,
in the structure of the teeth. In the mastodons the crown, or grinding
face of the tooth, is formed by more or less regular /\-shaped cross
ridges, covered with enamel, while in the elephants the enamel takes the
form of narrow, pocket-shaped plates, set upright in the body of the
tooth. Moreover, in the mastodons the roots of the teeth are long
prongs, while in the elephants the roots are small and irregular. A
glance at the cuts will show these distinctions better than they can be
explained by words. Back in the past, however, we meet, as we should if
there is any truth in the theory of evolution, with elephants having an
intermediate pattern of teeth.
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Tooth of Mastodon and of Mammoth.]
There is usually, or at least often, another point of difference between
elephants and mastodons, for many of the latter not only had tusks in
the upper, but in the lower jaw, and these are never found in any of the
true elephants. The lower tusks are longer and larger in the earlier
species of mastodon than in those of more recent age and in the latest
species, the common American mastodon, the little lower tusks were
usually shed early in life. These afford some hints of the relationships
of the mastodon; for in Europe are found remains of a huge beast well
called Dinotherium, or terrible animal, which possessed lower tusks
only, and these, instead of sticking out from the jaw are bent directly
downwards. No perfect skull of this creature has yet been found, but it
is believed to have had a short trunk. For a long time nothing but the
skull was known, and some naturalists thought the animal to have been a
gigantic manatee, or sea cow, and that the tusks were used for tearing
food from the bottom of rivers and for anchoring the animal to the bank,
just as the walrus uses his tusks for digging clams and climbing out
upon the ice. In the first restorations of Dinotherium it is represented
lying amidst reeds, the feet concealed from view, the head alone
visible, but now it is pictured as standing erect, for the discovery of
massive leg-bones has definitely settled the question as to whether it
did or did not have limbs.
There is another hint of relationship in the upper tusks of the earlier
mastodons, and this is the presence of a band of enamel running down
each tusk. In all gnawing animals the front, cutting teeth are formed of
soft dentine, or ivory, faced with a plate of enamel, just as the blade
of a chisel or plane is formed of a plate of tempered steel backed with
soft iron; the object of this being the same in both tooth and chisel,
to keep the edge sharp by wearing away the softer material. In the case
of the chisel this is done by a man with a grindstone, but with the
tooth it is performed automatically and more pleasantly by the gnawing
of food. In the mastodon and elephant the tusks, which are the
representatives of the cutting teeth of rodents, are wide apart, and of
course do not gnaw anything, but the presence of these enamel bands
hints at a time when they and their owner were smaller and differently
shaped, and the teeth were used for cutting. Thus, great though the
disparity of size may be, there is a suggestion that through the
mastodon the elephant is distantly related to the mouse, and that, could
we trace their respective pedigrees far enough, we might find a common
ancestor.
This presence of structures that are apparently of no use, often worse
than useless, is regarded as the survival of characters that once served
some good purpose, like the familiar buttons on the sleeve or at the
back of a man's coat, or the bows and ruffles on a woman's dress. We
are told that these are put on "to make the dress look pretty," but the
student regards the bows as vestiges of the time when there were no
buttons and hooks and eyes had not been invented, and dresses were tied
together with strings or ribbons. As for ruffles, they took the place of
flounces, and flounces are vestiges of the time when a young woman wore
the greater part of her wardrobe on her back, putting on one dress above
another, the bottoms of the skirts showing like so many flounces. So
buttons, ruffles, and the vermiform appendix of which we hear so much
all fall in the category of vestigial structures.
Where the mastodons originated, we know not: Senor Ameghino thinks their
ancestors are to be found in Patagonia, and he is very probably wrong;
Professor Cope thought they came from Asia, and he is probably right; or
they may have immigrated from the convenient Antarctica, which is called
up to account for various facts in the distribution of animals.[18]
[18] _During the past year, 1901, Mr. C. W. Andrews of the British
Museum has discovered in Egypt a small and primitive species of
mastodon, also the remains of another animal which he thinks may be the
long sought ancestor of the elephant family, which includes the mammoth
and mastodon._
Neither do we at present know just how many species of mastodons there
may have been in the Western Hemisphere, for most of them are known from
scattered teeth, single jaws, and odd bones, so that we cannot tell just
what differences may be due to sex or individual variation. It is
certain, however, that several distinct kinds, or species, have
inhabited various parts of North America, while remains of others occur
in South America. _The_ mastodon, however, the one most recent in point
of time, and the best known because its remains are scattered far and
wide over pretty much the length and breadth of the United States, and
are found also in southern and western Canada, is the well-named
_Mastodon americanus_,[19] and unless otherwise specified this alone
will be meant when the name mastodon is used. In some localities the
mastodon seems to have abounded, but between the Hudson and Connecticut
Rivers indications of its former presence are rare, and east of that
they are practically wanting. The best preserved specimens come from
Ulster and Orange Counties, New York, for these seem to have furnished
the animal with the best facilities for getting mired. Just west of the
Catskills, parallel with the valley of the Hudson, is a series of
meadows, bogs, and pools marking the sites of swamps that came into
existence after the recession of the mighty ice-sheet that long covered
eastern North America, and in these many a mastodon, seeking for food or
water, or merely wallowing in the mud, stuck fast and perished
miserably. And here to-day the spade of the farmer as he sinks a ditch
to drain what is left of some beaver pond of bygone days, strikes some
bone as brown and rugged as a root, so like a piece of water-soaked wood
that nine times out of ten it is taken for a fragment of tree-trunk.
[19] _This has also been called giganteus and ohioticus, but the name
americanus claims priority, and should therefore be used._
The first notice of the mastodon in North America goes back to 1712, and
is found in a letter from Cotton Mather to Dr. Woodward (of England?)
written at Boston on November 17th, in which he speaks of a large work
in manuscript entitled _Biblia Americana_, and gives as a sample a note
on the passage in Genesis (VI. 4) in which we read that "there were
giants in the earth in those days." We are told that this is confirmed
by "the bones and teeth of some large animal found lately in Albany, in
New England, which for some reason he thinks to be human; particularly a
tooth brought from the place where it was found to New York in 1705,
being a very large grinder, weighing four pounds and three quarters;
with a bone supposed to be a thigh-bone, seventeen feet long," the total
length of the body being taken as seventy-five feet. Thus bones of the
mastodon, as well as those of the mammoth, have done duty as those of
giants.
And as the first mastodon remains recorded from North America came from
the region west of the Hudson, so the first fairly complete skeleton
also came from that locality, secured at a very considerable outlay of
money and a still more considerable expenditure of labor by the
exertions of C. W. Peale. This specimen was described at some length by
Rembrandt Peale in a privately printed pamphlet, now unfortunately
rare, and described in some respects better than has been done by any
subsequent writer, since the points of difference between various parts
of the mastodon and elephant were clearly pointed out. This skeleton was
exhibited in London, and afterwards at Peale's Museum in Philadelphia
where, with much other valuable material, it was destroyed by fire.
Struck by the evident crushing power of the great ridged molars, Peale
was led to believe that the mastodon was a creature of carnivorous
habits, and so described it, but this error is excusable, the more that
to this day, when the mastodon is well known, and its description
published time and again in the daily papers, finders of the teeth often
consider them as belonging to some huge beast of prey.
Since the time of Peale several fine specimens have been taken from
Ulster and Orange Counties, among them the well-known "Warren Mastodon,"
and there is not the slightest doubt that many more will be recovered
from the meadows, swamps, and pond holes of these two counties.
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--The Missourium of Koch, from a Tracing of the
Figure Illustrating Koch's Description.]
The next mastodon to appear on the scene was the so-called Missourium of
Albert Koch, which he constructed somewhat as he did the Hydrarchus (see
p. 61) of several individuals pieced together, thus forming a skeleton
that was a monster in more ways than one. To heighten the effect, the
curved tusks were so placed that they stood out at right angles to the
sides of the head, like the swords upon the axles of ancient war
chariots. Like Peale's specimen this was exhibited in London, and there
it still remains, for, stripped of its superfluous bones, and remounted,
it may now be seen in the British Museum.
Many a mastodon has come to light since the time of Koch, for while it
is commonly supposed that remains of the animal are great rarities, as a
matter of fact they are quite common, and it may safely be said that
during the seasons of ditching, draining, and well-digging not a week
passes without one or more mastodons being unearthed. Not that these are
complete skeletons, very far from it, the majority of finds are
scattered teeth, crumbling tusks, or massive leg-bones, but still the
mastodon is far commoner in the museums of this country than is the
African elephant, for at the present date there are eleven of the former
to one of the latter, the single skeleton of African elephant being that
of Jumbo in the American Museum of Natural History. If one may judge by
the abundance of bones, mastodons must have been very numerous in some
favored localities such as parts of Michigan, Florida, and Missouri and
about Big Bone Lick, Ky. Perhaps the most noteworthy of all deposits is
that at Kimmswick, about twenty miles south of St. Louis, where in a
limited area Mr. L. W. Beehler has exhumed bones representing several
hundred individuals, varying in size from a mere baby mastodon up to the
great tusker whose wornout teeth proclaim that he had reached the limit
of even mastodonic old age. The spot where this remarkable deposit was
found is at the foot of a bluff near the junction of two little streams,
and it seems probable that in the days when these were larger the spring
floods swept down the bodies of animals that had perished during the
winter to ground in an eddy beneath the bluff. Or as the place abounds
in springs of sulphur and salt water it may be that this was where the
animals assembled during cold weather, just as the moas are believed to
have gathered in the swamps of New Zealand, and here the weaker died and
left their bones.
The mastodon must have looked very much like any other elephant, though
a little shorter in the legs and somewhat more heavily built than either
of the living species, while the head was a trifle flatter and the jaw
decidedly longer. The tusks are a variable quantity, sometimes merely
bowing outwards, often curving upwards to form a half circle; they were
never so long as the largest mammoth tusks, but to make up for this they
were a shade stouter for their length. As the mastodon ranged well to
the north it is fair to suppose that he may have been covered with long
hair, a supposition that seems to be borne out by the discovery, noted
by Rembrandt Peale, of a mass of long, coarse, woolly hair buried in one
of the swamps of Ulster County, New York. And with these facts in mind,
aided by photographs of various skeletons of mastodons, Mr. Gleeson
made the restoration which accompanies this chapter.
[Illustration: Fig. 40.--The Mastodon. _From a drawing by J. M.
Gleeson._]
As for the size of the mastodon, this, like that of the mammoth, is
popularly much over-estimated, and it is more than doubtful if any
attained the height of a full-grown African elephant. The largest femur,
or thigh-bone, that has come under the writer's notice was one he
measured as it lay in the earth at Kimmswick, and this was just four
feet long, three inches shorter than the thigh-bone of Jumbo. Several of
the largest thigh-bones measured show so striking an unanimity in size,
between 46 and 47 inches in length, that we may be pretty sure they
represent the average old "bull" mastodon, and if we say that these
animals stood ten feet high we are probably doing them full justice. An
occasional tusk reaches a length of ten feet, but seven or eight is the
usual size, with a diameter of as many inches, and this is no larger
than the tusks of the African elephant would grow if they had a chance.
It is painful to be obliged to scale down the mastodon as we have just
done the mammoth, but if any reader knows of specimens larger than those
noted, he should by all means publish their measurements.[20]
[20] _As skeletons are sometimes mounted, they stand a full foot or more
higher at the shoulders than the animal stood in life, this being caused
by raising the body until the shoulder-blades are far below the tips of
the vertebrae, a position they never assume in life._
The disappearance of the mastodon is as difficult to account for as that
of the mammoth, and, as will be noted, there is absolutely no evidence
to show that man had any hand in it. Neither can it be ascribed to
change of climate, for the mastodon, as indicated by the wide
distribution of its bones, was apparently adapted to a great diversity
of climates, and was as much at home amid the cool swamps of Michigan
and New York as on the warm savannas of Florida and Louisiana. Certainly
the much used, and abused, glacial epoch cannot be held accountable for
the extermination of the creature, for the mastodon came into New York
after the recession of the great ice-sheet, and tarried to so late a
date that bones buried in the swamps retain much of their animal
matter. So recent, comparatively speaking, has been the disappearance of
the mastodon, and so fresh-looking are some of its bones, that Thomas
Jefferson thought in his day that it might still be living in some part
of the then unexplored Northwest.
It is a moot question whether or not man and the mastodon were
contemporaries in North America, and while many there be who, like the
writer of these lines, believe that this was the case, an expression of
belief is not a demonstration of fact. The best that can be said is that
there are scattered bits of testimony, slight though they are, which
seem to point that way, but no one so strong by itself that it could not
be shaken by sharp cross-questioning and enable man to prove an alibi in
a trial by jury. For example, in the great bone deposit at Kimmswick,
Mo., Mr. Beehler found a flint arrowhead, but this may have lain just
over the bone-bearing layer, or have got in by some accident in
excavating. How easily a mistake may be made is shown by the report sent
to the United States National Museum of many arrowheads associated with
mastodon bones in a spring at Afton, Indian Territory. This spring was
investigated, and a few mastodon bones and flint arrowheads were found,
but the latter were in a stratum just above the bones, although this was
overlooked by the first diggers.[21] Koch reported finding charcoal and
arrowheads so associated with mastodon bones that he inferred the animal
to have been destroyed by fire and arrows after it became mired. It has
been said that Koch could have had no object in disseminating this
report, and hence that it may be credited, but he had just as much
interest in doing this as he did in fabricating the Hydrarchus and the
Missourium, and his testimony is not to be considered seriously. It
seems to be with the mastodon much as it is with the sea-serpent; the
latter never appears to a naturalist, remains of the former are never
found by a trained observer associated with indications of the presence
of man. Perhaps an exception should be made in the case of Professor J.
M. Clarke, who found fragments of charcoal in a deposit of muck under
some bones of mastodon.
[21] _This locality has just been carefully investigated by Mr. W. H.
Holmes of the United States National Museum who found bones of the
mastodon and Southern Mammoth associated with arrowheads. But he also
found fresh bones of bison, horse, and wolf, showing that these and the
arrowheads had simply sunk to the level of the older deposit._
We may pass by the so-called "Elephant Mound," which to the eye of an
unimaginative observer looks as if it might have been intended for any
one of several beasts; also, with bated breath and due respect for the
bitter controversy waged over them, pass we by the elephant pipes. There
remains, then, not a bit of man's handiwork, not a piece of pottery,
engraved stone, or scratched bone that can _unhesitatingly_ be said to
have been wrought into the shape of an elephant before the coming of the
white man. True, there is "The Lenape Stone," found near Doyleston, Pa.,
in 1872, a gorget graven on one side with the representation of men
attacking an elephant, while the other bears a number of figures of
various animals. The good faith of the finder of this stone is
unimpeachable, but it is a curious fact that, while this gorget is
elaborately decorated on both sides, no similar stone, out of all that
have been found, bears any image whatsoever. On the other hand, if not
made by the aborigines, who made it, why was it made, and why did nine
years elapse between the discovery of the first and second portions of
the broken ornament? These are questions the reader may decide for
himself; the author will only say that to his mind the drawing is too
elaborate, and depicts entirely too much to have been made by a
primitive artist. A much better bit of testimony seems to be presented
by a fragment of Fulgur shell found near Hollyoak, Del., and now in the
United States National Museum, which bears a very rudely scratched image
of an animal that may have been intended for a mastodon or a bison. This
piece of shell is undeniably old, but there is, unfortunately, the
uncertainty just mentioned as to the animal depicted. The familiar
legend of the Big Buffalo that destroyed animals and men and defied even
the lightnings of the Great Spirit has been thought by some to have
originated in a tradition of the mastodon handed down from ancient
times; but why consider that the mastodon is meant? Why not a legendary
bison that has increased with years of story-telling? And so the
co-existence of man and mastodon must rest as a case of not proven,
although there is a strong probability that the two did live together in
the dim ages of the past, and some day the evidence may come to light
that will prove it beyond a peradventure. If scientific men are charged
with obstinacy and unwarranted incredulity in declining to accept the
testimony so far presented, it must be remembered that the evidence as
to the existence of the sea serpent is far stronger, since it rests on
the testimony of eye-witnesses, and yet the creature himself has never
been seen by a trained observer, nor has any specimen, not a scale, a
tooth, or a bone, ever made its way into any museum.
_REFERENCES_
_There are at least eleven mounted skeletons of the Mastodon in the
United States, and the writer trusts he may be pardoned for mentioning
only those which are most accessible. These are in the American Museum
of Natural History, New York; the State Museum, Albany, N. Y.; Field
Columbian Museum, Chicago; Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg; Museum of
Comparative Zooelogy, Cambridge, Mass. There is no mounted skeleton in
the United States National Museum, nor has there ever been._
_The heaviest pair of tusks is in the possession of T. O. Tuttle,
Seneca, Mich., and they are nine and one-half inches in diameter, and a
little over eight feet long; very few tusks, however, reach eight inches
in diameter. The thigh-bone of an old male mastodon measures from
forty-five to forty-six and one-half inches long, the humerus from
thirty-five to forty inches. The height of the mounted skeleton is of
little value as an indication of size, since it depends so much upon the
manner in which the skeleton is mounted. The grinders of the mastodon
have three cross ridges, save the last, which has four, and a final
elevation, or heel. This does not apply to the teeth of very young
animals. The presence or absence of the last grinder will show whether
or not the animal is of full age and size, while the amount of wear
indicates the comparative age of the specimen._
_The skeleton of the "Warren Mastodon" is described at length by Dr. J.
C. Warren, in a quarto volume entitled "Mastodon Giganteus." There is
much information in a little book by J. P. MacLean, "Mastodon, Mammoth,
and Man," but the reader must not accept all its statements
unhesitatingly. The first volume, 1887, of the New Scribner's Magazine
contains an article on "American Elephant Myths," by Professor W. B.
Scott, but he is under an erroneous impression regarding the size of the
mastodon, and photographs of the Maya carvings show that their
resemblance to elephants has been exaggerated in the wood cuts. The
story of the Lenape Stone is told at length by H. C. Mercer in "The
Lenape Stone, or the Indian and the Mammoth."_