THE MASTODON

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.

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: SeÑor 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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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 ZoÖlogy, 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."