Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1891-11-05
Jones OF \ .ASTODONS.
WHY COMPLETE SKELETONS ARE
BARELY FOUND NOWADAYS.

the mastodon remains discovered at Oak
fiel |. "A man came TO me yesterday,
sal he, land shovel me rib which he
sal he had dug up. It was certainly a
ma todon rib. He said he was going to
dig for the rest OF it. but l doubt if he
fines very much NOR You can easily
see how this might b. Suppose an OK
get stuck in the mui and dies, wolves
tea the flesh and gnf " the bones: per-
hal skunk will larry some of the
SIN ller ones into hi hole. Bones de-
cor pose. If there is food they become
sea tered.
So, you see, before time has dug a
gra Te in which the remains of our i'm
agi nary OK may rest undisturbed for
age ;, chance has scattered them far and
vice. So it is with the fossil remains
of he mastodon and mammoth, and the
man who finds one bone of the animal
and digs for the rest is very apt to be
disappointed. There IS hardly county
in the United States west of New Eng
| land where remains of mastodons have
not been found at one time or another.
The country was full of them. l believe
| that mastOdon tooth was found in this
city some twenty years ago, and several
bones were found near the Brighton
lock. The mammoth bore about the
same relation to the Elastodon that the
Indian elephant does to the African.
''Mastodons were more numerous in
this country and mammoths in Europe
and Asia.
THE STUDY OF BONES.
81 have here" continued Professor
Ward, ''the skull and upper jaw of a
baby mastodon which, as you see. is
very perfect. The teeth are milk teeth,
and you can see one of the second teeth
imbedded in the upper jaw. The teeth
formed at the rear and were pushed for
ward. l say baby mastodon, and so it
was; but it was as large as the largest
OK to be seen at a county fair. Under
the upper layer of skull you see this sort
of honeycomb of bone. You know
enough of anatomy to remember that
the human skull is composed of an
upper and under layer of hard bone,
with softer bone between. The human
head does not require to be large to be
in proportion to the body, and caput
just large enough to hold the brain is all
that is required.
IAN elephant, mastodon or mammoth
does not require large brain, but they
all need massive he'll. Here you have
the upper and unde- layer, as in the
human skull, but the porous bone be-
tween is magnifed Enormously. 1t is
nearly foot in thick less in some of the
larger specimens. | remember when l
was on the coast of y rica seeing what |
supposed to be an "normous hornets
nest. The natives Id me it was the
head of an elephant which they had
killed three or four y ars previous. The
upper layer of the SKI Il had been shelled
off, leaving the mid lie honeycomb of
bone exposed to view 1t was some time
before l could bring myself to believe
that it was really an lephant's skull"
Professor Ward shc wed his visitor his
col ection of MANN Jth and mastodon
boz es. He has nearly enough of different
SIZES to reconstruct IN entire animal,
but, of course, the variation in size
would prevent this. 1t is much more
sat sfactory in the results obtained to
take these specimens for models and re-
construct 4 skeleton from wood. Il sup
pos, said the reporter, after prolonged
ns7iection of these ouriosities, Il sup
pose that human eycs never saw these
wonderful animals that roamed over the
country in such vas numbers SO long
ago"
THE ONLY EVIDENCE.
"You are mistaken" said Professor
Ward, "though your mistake has been
that of the world of science until recent
". Bones of the mastodon have been
found split open in such way that the
object of breaking them was evident. 1t
was TO obtain the marrow within. But
more, the stone head of hatchet with
which the work was done has been found
near by. Now, there are no animals
which use stone hatchets TO break up
bones. That hatchet head was once the
implement of some primeval warrior. A
shoulder blade Of the mastodon, bone
comparatively thin, has been found
pierced, as if by a spear, and the spear
was evidently thrust in and withdrawn
from the body of the animal, and when
it was withdrawn its head was probably
torn of. Monkeys don't carry spears.
But. though these evidences are con-
vincing enough, they are not the best
proof we have that man existed in the
days of the mammoth and the mastodon
lo+h Mi
quarians who have spent so much time
in an endeavor to discover the meaning
of the mounds erected by the mound
builders have made one thing certain.
Many of these mounds were constructed
in tne shape of animals and birds. There
on the wall hang a number of facsimiles
of taese mounds. They were prepared
by member of the Milwaukee His
torical society. There is one which evil
del tly represents hawk or some similar
bird of prey with outstretched wings,
and there is another which evidently
por rays some squirrellike animal with
a smarkably long tail, and here you
have as perfect a representation of an
ele hantlike animal as could we'll be con-
tri' ed.
Now, had the mound builders been
as armed in comparative anatomy as we
are and had they reconstructed mas
tod IN as we have, the y could never have
III, erstood the meaning of the cavity in
the skull which indicates to us that the
ami nal had a trunk We could never
have done that had we not seen an ele-
ph; MT. TO, the mouhd builders saw the
ma todors before they became extinct.
TIL Y hunted them and, perhaps, were
pr :tically Instrumental in their exter
mil alton. .'-Rochester Post-Express.
Methods of n Doctors.
is related that lieutenant in COM
ma ID of one of her lajesty's gunboats
det ned the responsit lity of the charge
of medicine chest TO much for him.
I'm nediately she was off soundings the
ga ant officer music ed all hands and
div .ded the contents f the chest equally,
so that each had MS whack and ma
ma r" There are tN other naval yarns
in his connection wei worth mention