LITMIR.BIZ

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of these remains exists, however, of another character. They do not in general appear to have been rolled, but to have lived where they are now found; in some instances, as along the Great Osage River, being imbedded in a vertical position, as if the animals had been suddenly bogged in the swampy soil. Nor is there any great accumulation of earth upon them generally. All along the edges of that great saline morass called, from the abundance of these animal relics, Big Bone Lick, and on the borders, the skeletons are found sunk in the soft earth, many of them not more than a yard or two below the surface, and some even scarcely covered. With them are found in large numbers the bones of the existing bison, the wapiti-stag, and other herbivores, which still throng to the same place, for the same reasons, and meet the same fate.

      Comparative anatomy determines, from the structure of the bones of the head in the Mastodon, that it must have carried a proboscis like that of the elephant. This, though wholly fleshy, has left traces of its existence. Barton reports that, in 1762, out of five skeletons which were seen by the natives, one skull still possessed what they described as a "long nose" with the mouth under it. And Kalm, in speaking of a skeleton, discovered by the Indians in what is now the State of Illinois, says that the form of the trunk was still apparent, though half decomposed. The preservation of these perishable tissues in this case must doubtless be attributed to the salt with which the bog-earth is saturated. Still more recently a skeleton was found in Virginia, which contained a very interesting proof of the food of the animal: a mass of twigs, grass, and leaves, in a half-bruised state, enclosed in a sort of sac, lay within the cavity of the body, doubtless the contents of the stomach. Some of the twigs could be identified as those of existing species of trees and shrubs, among them a species of rose, still common in the region.

      All this is very strong evidence that the deposition of these remains cannot have taken place in a very remote era—that, in fact, it must have been since the general deluge recorded in the Word of God.

      Hugh Miller has an interesting observation concerning the actual date of geologic phenomena in North America, compared with that of their counterparts in the Old World. He says, "The much greater remoteness of the mastodontic period in Europe than in America is a circumstance worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts that seem to indicate a general transposition of at least the later geologic ages on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Groups of corresponding character on the eastern and western shores of this great ocean were not contemporaneous in time. It has been repeatedly remarked that the existing plants and trees of the United States, with not a few of its fishes and reptiles, bear in their forms and constructions the marks of a much greater antiquity than those of Europe. The geologist who set himself to discover similar types on the eastern side of the Atlantic, would have to seek for them among the deposits of the later tertiaries. North America seems to be still passing through its later tertiary ages; and it appears to be a consequence of this curious transposition, that while in Europe the mastodontic period is removed by two great geologic eras, from the present time, it is removed from it in America by only one."[11]

      Professor Agassiz has expressed opinions of the same character, adducing the present existence in America of several forms of animals, which are known in this hemisphere only in a fossil state.[12]

      I cannot refrain from adding the following combination of fact and speculation, from the pen of an accomplished traveller in Mexico. It opens up a new train of ideas:—

      "Some time before our visit, a number of workmen were employed on the neighbouring estate of Chapingo, to excavate a canal over that part of the plain from which the waters have gradually retired during the last three centuries. At four feet below the surface, they reached an ancient causeway, of the existence of which there was of course not the most remote suspicion. The cedar piles, by which the sides were supported, were still sound at heart. Three feet below the edge of this ancient work, in what may have been the very ditch, they struck upon the entire skeleton of a Mastodon, embedded in the blue clay. Many of the most valuable bones were lost by the careless manner in which they were extricated; others were ground to powder on their conveyance to the capital, but sufficient remained to prove that the animal had been of great size. My informant measured the diameter [qu. circumference?] of the tusk, and found it to be eighteen inches.

      "Though I should be very glad to take shelter under the convenient Quien sabe? the use of which I have suggested to you, I could not avoid, at the time I was in Mexico, putting my isolated facts together, and feeling inclined to believe that this country had not only been inhabited in extremely remote times, when the valley bore a very different aspect from that which it now exhibits, or which tradition gives it, but that the extinct race of enormous animals, whose remains would seem, in the instance I have cited, to be coeval with the undated works of man, may have been subjected to his will, and made instrumental, by the application of their gigantic force, to the transport of those vast masses of sculptured and chiselled rock which we marvel to see lying in positions so far removed from their natural site.

      "The existence of these ancient paved causeways also, not only from their solid construction over the flat and low plains of the valley, but as they may be traced running for miles over the dry table-land and the mountains, appears to me to lend plausibility to the supposition; as one might inquire, to what end the labour of such works, in a country where beasts of burden were unknown?

      "But I leave this subject to wiser heads and bolder theorists. Had the Mammoth of Chapingo been discovered with a ring in his nose, or a bit in his mouth, a yoke on his head, or a crupper under his tail, the question would have been set at rest. As it is, there is plenty of room for conjecture and dispute."[13]

      With respect to the great extinct Mammalia of South America, we find Mr. Darwin, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of so many of them, continually expressing his wonder at the comparatively modern era of their existence. After having enumerated nine vast beasts, which he found imbedded in the beach at Bahia Blanca, within the space of 200 yards square, and remarked how numerous in kinds the ancient inhabitants of the country must have been, he observes that "this enumeration belongs to a very late tertiary period. From the bones of the Scelidotherium, including even the kneecap, being entombed in their proper relative positions, and from the osseous armour of the great armadillo-like animal being so well preserved, together with the bones of one of its legs, we may feel assured that these remains were fresh and united by their ligaments when deposited in the gravel with the shells. Hence we have good evidence that the above-enumerated gigantic quadrupeds, more different from those of the present day than the oldest of the tertiary quadrupeds of Europe, lived whilst the sea was peopled with most of its present inhabitants."[14]

      Of the remains of the Mylodon, and of that strange semi-aquatic creature the Toxodon, he says, they appeared so fresh that it was difficult to believe they had lain buried for ages under ground. The bones were so fresh, that they yielded, on careful analysis, seven per cent. of animal matter, and when heated in the flame of a spirit-lamp, they not only exhaled a very strong animal odour, but actually burned with a small flame.

      Mr. Darwin's interest was excited by the evidences everywhere present of the immensity of this extinct population. "The number of the remains imbedded in the great estuary-deposit which forms the Pampas, and covers the gigantic rocks of Banda Oriental, must be extraordinarily great. I believe a straight line drawn in any direction through the Pampas would cut through some skeleton or bones. … We may suppose that the whole area of the Pampas is one wide sepulchre of these extinct gigantic quadrupeds."[15]

      The whole plain of South America from the Rio Plata to the Straits of Magellan has been raised from the sea within the species-life of the existing sea-shells, the old and weathered specimens of which, left on the surface of the plain, still partially retain their colours! Darwin infers, as certain, from data which he has adduced, that the Macrauchen, that strange giraffe-necked pachyderm, lived long after the sea was inhabited by its present shells, and when the vegetation of the land could not have been other than it is now. And if the Macrauchen, then the Toxodon, the Scelidothere, the Megathere, the Mylodon, the Glyptodon, the Glossothere, and all the rest of the quaint but mighty host of gone giants, that once thronged these austral plains.

      Evidence for the recent existence of the colossal ostrich-like birds of New Zealand is stronger still. It is about twenty-one years

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