d by the aborigines regarding the mastodon. By
none of at least the higher naturalists has there been a doubt
entertained respecting its herbivorous character; and the discovery of
late years of the stomach of an individual charged with decayed herbage
and fragments of the succulent branches of trees, some of them of
existing species, has demonstrated the solidity of the reasonings
founded on its general structure and aspect. The pseudo-traditions,
however, represent it in every instance as a carnivorous tyrant, that,
had it not been itself destroyed, would have destroyed all the other
animals its contemporaries. It is said by the red men of Virginia, "that
a troop of these tremendous quadrupeds made fearful havoc for some time
among the deer, the buffaloes, and all the other animals created for the
use of the Indians, and spread desolation far and wide. At last '_the
Mighty Man above_' seized his thunder and killed them all, with the
exception of the largest of the males, who presenting his head to the
thunderbolts, shook them off as they fell; but, being wounded in the
side, he betook himself to flight towards the great lakes, where he
still resides at the present day."

Let me here remind you in the passing, that that antiquity of type
which characterizes the recent productions of North America is one of
many wonders,--not absolutely geological in themselves, but which, save
for the revelations of geology, would have forever remained unnoted and
unknown,--which have been pressed, during the last half century, on the
notice of naturalists. "It is a circumstance quite extraordinary and
unexpected," says Agassiz, in his profoundly interesting work on Lake
Superior, "that the fossil plants of the Tertiary beds of Oeningen
resemble more closely the trees and shrubs which grow at present in the
eastern parts of North America, than those of any other parts of the
world; thus allowing us to express correctly the difference between the
opposite coasts of Europe and America, by saying that the present
eastern American flora, and, I may add, the fauna also, have a more
ancient character than those of Europe. The plants, especially the trees
and shrubs, growing in our days in the United States, are, as it were,
old-fashioned; and the characteristic genera Lagomys, Chelydra, and the
large Salamanders with permanent gills, that remind us of the fossils of
Oeningen, are at least equally so;--they bear the marks of former ages."
How