[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.
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.