, 1891-10-28
N OF MAST0DoNS. {
IN IO9k
WHY COMPLETE SKELETONS ARE
RARELY FOUND NOWADAYS.

Then the Bones Generally Decompose
Evidence That Men Saw Them.
reporter has had an interesting tall
with Professor Ward on the subject Of
the mastodon remains discovered at Oak
field. IA man came to me yesterday
said he, 'and showed me a nib which he
said he had dug up. 1t was certainly 8
mastodon rib. He said he was going tc
dig for the rest of it, but l doubt If he
finds very much more. You a easily
see how this might be. Suppose an OF
gets stuck in the mud and dies, wolves
tear the flesh and gnaw the bones; per,
haps a skunk will carry some of the
smaller ones into his hole. Bones de-
compose. If there is a flood they become
scattered
80. you see, before time has dug 3
grave in which the remains of u i'm
aginary OK may rest undisturbed for
ages, chance has scattered them far and
wide. So it is with the fossil remains
of the 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 a 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 wa full of them. l believe
that a 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 mastodon that the
Indian elephant does to the African.
"Mastodons were more numerous in
this country and mammoths in Europe
and Asia.
THE STUDY OF I'M
II nave 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. say a 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 l you see this sort
of ~honeycomb OF loEe. You know
enough of anatomy to remember that
the h-Hrdri 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 a caput
just large enough to hold the brain is all
that is required.
IAN elephant, mastodon OF mammoth
does not require n large brain, but they
all need a massive head. Here you have
the upper mi under layer, as in the
human skull, but the porous bone be-
tween is magnihed enormously. 1t is
nearly n foot in thickness in some of the
larger specimens. I remember when |
was on the coast of Africa seeing what l
supposed to be an enormous hornets
nest. The natives told me it wa the
head Of an elephant which they had
killed three or four years previous. The
upper layer of the skull had been shelled
off, leaving the middle ~honeycomb OF
bone exposed to view. 1t was some time
before l could bring myself to believe
that it was really an elephants skull"
Professor Ward showed his visitor his
collection of mammoth and mastodon
bones. He has nearly enough of different
sizes to reconstruct al entire animal,
but, of course, the variation in size
would prevent this. 1t is much more
satisfactory in the results obtained to
take these specimens for models and re-
construct a skeleton from wood. 81 sup
pose" said the reporter. after a prolonged
inspection Of these c~uriosities, II sup
pose that human eyes never saw these
wonderful animals that roamed over the
country in such vast numbers so long
ago."
THE ONLY EVIDENCE.
"You are mistaken" said Professor
Ward, Though your mistake has been
fhat pf fha world Of actanrn until ranant.
ly. Bones Of the mastodon have been
found split open in such a way that the
object Of breaking them was evident. 1t
was to obtain the marrow within. But
more, the stone head of a Ratchet with
which thework was done has been found
near by. Now, there are no animals
which use stone hatchets to break up
bones. That Ratchet head was once the
implement of some primeval warrior. A
shoulder blade of the mastodon, a bone
comparatively thin, has been found
pierced, as if by a spear, and the spear
head has been found with it. The spear
was evidently thrust in and withdrawn
from the body of the animal, and wher
it was withdrawn its head was probably
torn off. Monkeys don't carry spears.
But, though these evidences are con,
vincing enough, they are not the bes
proof we have hat man existed in tn,
days of the mammoth and the mastodor
and has survived them both. Anti
quarians who have spent 30 much tim,
in an endeavor to discover the meaning
of the mounds erected by the noun
builders have made one thing certain
Many of these mounds were constructe,
in the shape of animals and birds. Their
on the wall hang a number of facsimile
of these mounds. They We're prepare
by a member Of the Milwaukee Hi
torical society. There is one which ev
IDENTIFY represents a hawk or some simila
bird of prey with outstretched wing
and there is another which evidentl
portrays some squirrellike animal wit
a remarkably long tail, and here 20
have as perfect a representation of a
e~lephantlike animal as could well be COZ
trived.
Now, had the mound builders bee
as learned in comparative anatomy as W
are, and had they reconstructed a ma
todon as we have, they could never ha,
understood the meaning of the cavity
the skull which indicates to us that Il
animal had a trunk. We could new