Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1883-12-14
a MONSTER MASTODON.
The American Vice Consul at Toronto
Has a Bit of Good Luck.


| Has a Bit of Good Luck.
| Mr.. Hirschfel lder, American Vice
Consul here, and well known arch
aologist, has been sin luck" recently.
a couple of weeks ago he was fortunate
enough to secure some stone tablets
with well-deined hieroglyphics from
! Muskoka. He had scarcely settled
himself down to business again when
he was off on another expedition, this
time to place in the vicinity OF Wood
stock, where he has been digging and
delving for the past four or five days.
The story of his expedition is an inter-
esting one. Twelve years ago, while
some laborers were engaged in digging
a drain on the farm of George Crumble,
about five miles east Of Woodstock, and
in the township and county OF Oxford,
one OF them met with an obstruction
which he smashed with bis spade and
pitched to one side. 1t turned out to bs
bone belonging to some gigantic ami
NAL, but nothing further was thought of
it and the matter was forgotten. About
two years ago it was decided to tile
drain the same field, and in clearing out
the old drain other bones were found.
An enterprising individual by the name
of Carter secured them, and after clean
ing, vanishing, and duly labelling the
relics, proceeded to exhibit them at 80
much head, for the benefit of the
rising generation. Mr.. Hirschfelder
came to hear of them, and after paying
n good round sum secured the bones
Another payment secured the right to
dig over Crumble's field, in which they
were found. A gang of men We e at
once set to work. A ditch IS feet ong,
40 feet wide and 1 feet deep was Jag,
and the enthusiastic archaologist was
rewarded by finding fully one-half of
the bones of gigantic mastodon. 1t is
needless to say they were very carefully
taken from their resting place and
boxed up for shipment to Toronto.
They are in a remarkably good state of
preservation, and their situation rem
dered the task of exhuming them ono
of comparative ease. The surface soil
consists OF slight sand, under which is
a layer of decaying vegetable matter.
Under this again is harder layer of
decaying vegetable mold; then comes
a soft, yellowish-colored clay, and last
the hard blue clay in which the remains
were found, the latter being only about
four feet below the surface. So far as
known at present, these are the first re-
mains of the kind ever discovered in
Canada. To give an idea of the huge
proportions of this monster, whose race
was extinct long before antiquity had be-
gun, few measurements of some Of
the bones which Mr.. Hirschfelder
brought back with him are given. Sew
eral of the ribs measure "A inches long
by about II in circumference. The
lower jaw is no less than 80 inches long
and must have weighed, i'm the living
animal, upwards of $50 pounds. The
surface of one of the teeth is inches
long by 81, wide, while, the root is |
buried over inches in the jaw. One |
vertebra measure IL inches in length,
and one of the bones of the fore leg 80 |
inches long by "a inches in circumfer-
ence Mr.. Hirschfelder thinks he has
fully one-half of the skeleton, and ex-
poets to get more.
The mastodon is an extinct proboci-
dian mammal, coming near the ele- |
phant, and either in the tertiary or |
more recent deposits in all quarters of |
the globe, except Africa. 1t has the |
vaulted and cellular skull of the ele-
phant, with large tusks in the upper jaw.
From the character of the nasal bones
and the shortness of the head and neck |
it is thought that, like the elephant, it |
had trunk. A few remains of the
mastodon had been discovered in the
United States rs early as 1705, but not |
until 1901 was anything like complete
skeleton obtained, when a tolerably
complete one was found in Orange |
county, New York
The geological position of the remains |
of this species has long been and still is
~ SupJtSe oh NhSRutS sthohhSot SCOACSioc.
In a few instances they are said to have
been found below the drift in the plio-
Gene, and even in the miocene,
but they have generally been Oh
tanned from the post-pliocene or alluvial |
formations at depth of from five to ten |
feet. Some have thought that the mas
tadons became extinct since the advent |
of man upon the earth, like the dinornes
and the dodo. According to Lyell the
period OF their destruction, though geo.
logically modern, must have been many
thousand years ago. According to
Owen the mastodons were elephants,
with molars less complex in structure
and adapted for coarser vegetable food,
ranging in time from the miocene to the
upper pliocene, and in space through
out the tropical and temperate latitudes.
The transition from the mastodo1 to the
elephant type of dentition is very
gradual.-[Toronto Mail.