Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Anacortes, Wash. Ter.) 1882-1887, 1883-12-15
A MONSTER MASTODON.
The American Vice COnsal at Toronto
Has n Bit of Good Luck.

Mr.. TIirschfelder, American Vice
Consul here, and a well known arch
@ologist, has been "in luck" recently.
| A couple of weeks ago he was fortunate
! enough to secure some stone tablets
with well-defined heroglyphics 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
| 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 his spade and
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
| a., ItYIx, lah N
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
| a good round sum secured the bones.
| Another payment secured the right to
| dig over Crumbles field in which they
were found. A gang of men were at
once set to work. A ditch IS feet long,
| 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep was dug,
| 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 remarkably good state Of
|
dered the task OF exhuming them one
of comparative ease. The surface soil
consists of slight sand, under which is
layer of decaying vegetable matter.
| Under this again is harder layer of
| decaying vegetable mold then comes
"A soft, yellowishcolored clay, and last
the hard blue clay in which the remains
| l., L., ,l
| four feet below the surface So far "a
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.. Ilirschfelder
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 30 inches long
and must have weighed, in the living
animal, upwards of $50 pounds. The
surface of one of the teeth is inches
long by So 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 30
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-
plant, 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
until 1901 was anything like complete
skeleton obtained, when 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
subject of dispute amongst geologists,
In few instances they are said to have
| Dtti DSioW tiiC Niit III tiiV RiiO
Gene, and even in the miocene
but they have generally been OBJ
tained from the post-pliocene or alluvial
formations at depth of from five to ter
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 t.
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 mastcdon to the
elephant type of dentition is very
gradual. Toronto Mail
The hampton family have lost by
i 4 4. a.. III 4 A L 4.