The Wichita daily eagle., 1894-01-16
GIANTS IN SWAMPS.
Mastodons That Have Been On
earthed in Marshy Regions
How Scientific Research Has Been Aided
by the Discovery of Extinct Birds
aDd Animals in Wet

It would perhaps be difficult to find
anybody who would speak a good
word for swamps. The man who
drains one and turns its marshy surface
into productive soil is universally re-
garded as q public benefactor. SO the
projected draining of the Dismal
swamp in Virginia and the Okefenokee
swamp of Georgia is regarded only
with favor. and few could be found to
regret the disappearance of these re-
markable features of our American
landscapes, says Youths Companion.
Yet, setting aside the strange
picturesqueness of such narshy regions
and the curiosities of plant life which
they exhibit, it is easy to show that
swamps have been useful in a manner
that could hardly have been antici-
pated. They have very effectually
served the cause of science by pre-
serving the remains of some of the
most remarkable of the former in
habitants of the earth.
Here in America the skeletons of
several mastodons have been found
imbedded in ancient swamps. and so
perfectly preserved that no difficulty
whatever has been encountered in re-
storing the bones to their normal po-
sition. setting the skeletons on their
feet and thus exhibiting to the eyes of
modern man the monster animals
which were proba bly, familiar sights to
our ancestors nobody knows how many
thousands of years ago.
In Ireland the ancient swamps were
equally ef1icacious in preserving for US
the gigantic elks which became mired
in them.
Swamps have proved no less useful
agents of science in other parts of the
world, and particularly in Australia,
New Zealand and Madagascar. What
could be more interesting than the
bones of giant bird which
was in all probability the roc
described by Sindbad? Just such
bones have been discovered in
the marshes of Madagascar and New
Zealand,and there is plenty of evidence
that the great birds which owned them
were the contemporaries of men in the
past history of those islands. But for
the swamps we might have remained
ignorant of the fact that birds with
legs larger and heavier than those of
the largest horse once fourished in the
southern hemisphere.
Lately these Madagascar swamps
have yielded other remains of extinct
animals, hardly less interesting than
the huge bird, the epiornis, itself.
These are the skeletons of a creature
resembling a lemur of gigantic size,
but remarkable for the small quantity
of brains which it possessed. 1t is said
that man was responsible for the de-
struction and disappearance of this
creature. If SO it was proba bly, SIM
pie case of brains against brute force.
There is reason for thinking that
still other discoveries remain to be
made in Madagascar-discoveries that
will possibly bring to light even more
interesting facts concerning the former
Inhabitants of that part of the world
Suppose one of our swamps. which
we regard as utterly useless, should
preserve to a. remote future age the
only remains of some animal like the
bison or the tiger, now rapidly becom-
ing extinct. The men of science then
living would have the same reason for
rejoicing that that swamp had existed
that we have for being thankful for
the revelations contained in the
swamps of ancient days.