[73] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1714, vol. xxix.
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 consequence of the saltness of its waters, herds of wild animals collect together, attracted by the salt, for which they have a great liking. This is probably the reason why so many bones have accumulated here. M. de Longueil carried away some bones and teeth, and, on his return to France, presented them to Daubenton and Buffon. The former declared the teeth to be those of a hippopotamus, and the tusk and gigantic thigh-bone he reported to belong to an elephant. Buffon, however, did not share this opinion, and succeeded in converting Daubenton, as well as other French naturalists, to his views. He gave to this fossil animal the name of “the Elephant of Ohio,” but formed an exaggerated idea of its size.
This discovery produced a great impression in Europe. The English, becoming masters of Canada by the peace of 1763, sought eagerly for more remains. Croghan, the geographer, visited the Big Bone Lick, and found there some more bones of the same kind. He forwarded many cases to different naturalists in London.
Sir Henry Howorth, in his recent work, The Mammoth and the Flood (in which are brought forward certain views not shared by most geologists), mentions that in 1762 the Shawnee Indians found, some three miles from the river Ohio, the skeletons of five Mastodons, and reported that one of the heads had a long nose attached to it, below which was the mouth. Several explorers report discoveries of a like nature, which, if they may be trusted, and if they really refer to the Mastodon, and not the Mammoth, seem to show that portions of the skin and hairy covering have been seen. If so, their preservation is probably due to the saltness of the waters of this marsh, for salt is a good preservative. In The American Journal of Science,[74] Dr. Koch reports the discovery of a Mastodon’s skeleton, of which the head and fore foot were well preserved, also large pieces of the skin, which looked like freshly tanned leather. But some of these accounts refer to tufts of hair—in one case three inches long.
[74] Vol. xxxvi. p. 199.
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 heterogeneous 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.