addition to the greater length of the tusks the mammoth was distinguished from the elephants of to-day by the long hair which hung in a coarse mane from the neck and along the belly, nearly dragging on the ground. This shaggy envelope of hair must have added greatly to the apparent size and formidable appearance of this giant.

We know less about the appearance of the mastodon than the elephant proper. Their proportions were evidently not more widely different than those of our domesticated bull and the buffalo. The mastodons were probably never over eleven feet high. They had straight tusks, as have our modern elephants, their grinding teeth, which exhibit the most characteristic differences, separating them from their larger relatives, were fitted for the grinding of rougher food. From the extreme frequency of the occurrence of the remains of the mastodon in the swamps of the West, it seems likely that this form of elephant was peculiarly suited to exist in such regions.

There can be no doubt that a few thousand years ago these companion giants roamed through the forests and along the streams of the Mississippi Valley. They fed upon a vegetation not materially different from that now existing there. Replace them in the primeval forests of that region and their wants would be as well supplied as when they were lords of the domain. The fragments of wood which one finds beneath their bones seem to be of the common species of existing trees; even the reeds and other swamp plants which are imbedded with their remains are apparently the same as those which now spring in the soil. The naturalist, accustomed as he is to behold the mysterious changes of life, where races sink at once into a common grave, and the face of earth prepared for other actors in the great tragedy of existence, cannot but feel more keenly than before the temporary character of all life when he opens to the light of day the resting place of one of those species of gigantic animals. What could have been the nature of these agents

which at one stroke drove from the face of earth two of the most powerful races of its inhabitants, sweeping with them many smaller forms, such as the extinct deer and bulls which we find buried with them. The unchanged geography of the country assures us that no great convulsion of nature brought it about. The similarity of the vegetation of the elephant period, with that now growing on the same soil, shows pretty conclusively that it was not due to great geographical changes of other regions reacting on the climate of the region they inhabited. It is not meant to assert that no changes of climate have taken place; on, the contrary, such changes have most likely come about; but they have hardly been sufficient to extinguish animals so well adapted as the Elephas primigenius undoubtedly was to brave climatic irregularities. There seems but one other way to explain the extirpation of these races and that is through the action of man. There is no longer any doubt that our ancestors of the stone age, on the European continent, were ushered on to earth in the midst of the gigantic animals of the elephant period. It is now over thirty years since Schmerling of Liege presented the evidence of the contemporaneity of the remains of man with those of the cave bear and other extinct animals. Step by step the evidence has accumulated, overwhelming the determined opposition of those who think that the truth they have is necessarily damaged by all new discoveries. It is impossible to present here the evidence which supports what may seem to many a too confident assertion; its character is known to most readers. Bones of these extinct animals, split for marrow and worked for tools, are probably the most important part of the evidence. But the most unquestionable bit of proof is that which is furnished by a fragment of a tusk of an elephant in the collec

*So far from a change from warmth to cold having been the cause of the extinction of the fossil elephants which have recently disappeared from the Mississippi Valley, all the evidence would warrant the conclusion that if change of climate was the agent at all, it likely acted by an alteration from cold to warmth, giving a climate too hot for a creature probably clothed as we know the Lena elephant to have been.

tion of M. Lartet, of Paris. Some artistic spirit of the stone age has commemorated an incident of the chase by graving upon this fragment a rude, but spirited representation of the animal to whom the tusk belonged. The form is very characteristic; the shape of head, such as the species is known to have had, differing considerably from that of the African elephant, is clearly shown. But one feature alone is sufficient to show that the savage meant to represent a member of the race to which the Lena elephant belonged; it is the long, shaggy hair, falling like a mane from the shoulders and neck and fringing the belly; this is clearly indicated in the engraving. But for the preservation of the Siberian elephants in ice we would have failed to perceive the meaning of this feature in the drawing; as it is it leaves no doubt that he who drew it had an Elephas primigenius in his mind's eye.

It was probably for the best that man should have come upon earth while these giants still lived. They were his teachers in the first arts of craft and courage. Having to dispute the possession of his primitive home, the caverns, with the gigantic cave bear, and the mastery of the forests with the formidable elephants, he was compelled to contrive weapons and use them with well concerted bravery. The magnitude of the dangers which surrounded him compelled him to associate himself with his fellow men, and his triumphs in struggles, where skill and valor prevailed against animal strength, gave him the first rude education of the combat.

If we must seek a reason for the death of the elephants in external influences we may well find it in the coming of man, though it would be quite as reasonable to suppose that their race already, as we have seen very ancient, passed away because it had lived its time and done its appointed work. We have no such evidence of the contact of man with this ancient race of giants on the continent of North America as European discoveries have afforded. No one who has ex

amined the conditions of entombment of the extinct peoples of the Western states, the preservations of their remains, and the changes which have taken place since their deposition, can believe that the disappearance of the elephants, and the coming of the North American man were separated by any great length of time. When the fields of the West, rich in the remains of these ancient animals and ancient men, are studied as they will be by the rising generation of investigators of that region, the precise relation will be easily established. It is not likely that it will be found that the highly organized mound building nations were instrumental in driving the extinct elephants from the soil of North America. Had they come in contact with these large creatures we should have had some representation of them in their pottery sculpture, where we find figures of all the common large mammals of the West, except as before remarked, the bison, as well as other forms like the manatee which could not have been personally known to the inhabitants of the Ohio Valley. It is more likely to have been some rude dweller in caves of the stone age who slew the last mammoth of America.

The history of the changes in the elephant life, a little while ago so abundant, on three at least of the five continents, is not unlike what we find among other types of animals and plants which have passed the full meridian of their existence and are hastening to their setting. While the type is in its full vigor it spreads its diversified species far and wide over northern as well as southern lands; when it begins to wane the northern species fall first in the struggle, and the last remnants of the type are found beneath the torrid sun where easier conditions permit them to protract a senile life. Among the plants the palm and tree ferns; among the animals the large reptiles like the crocodiles and alligators, the rhinoceros, the hippotamus, the tapirs, the monkeys, and many other types find in the tropical forests the conditions. of existence which the ruder climes of the north long since

denied them. Our speculative friend asks, "may it not be that man, driven from the northern lands by the coming of his higher successor on the stage of life, is to finally end his race on earth within the recesses of the gloomy forests of Brazil or Borneo?"

THE MOLLUSKS OF OUR CELLARS.

BY W. G. BINNEY.

MOST of the readers of the NATURALIST, who reside in the cities of our Atlantic coast, are aware that the cellars of their houses are infested with slugs and snails. They have seen or heard of the glistening tracks made by their slime, and have heard dreadful stories of the ugly creatures who left them when escaping from their nocturnal depredations. But as few of our readers have met them face to face, we propose giving a short description of each with a portrait of sufficient accuracy to enable any one to identify the separate species.

A word first about their characters and habits. They all belong to the great division of mollusks which are called Pulmonata, from the fact of their breathing with lung-like vessels. Furthermore, they all belong to that group of Pulmonata which are called Geophila, or lovers of dry land, from the fact of their habits being terrestrial in distinction from those which are adapted to living in fresh-water, or in the sea. These Geophila are distinguished in addition to their breathing with lung-like vessels by their having their eyes at the end of long, slender, cylindrical feelers. Thus far most authors agree, but in subdividing these Geophila into natural groups there is so little accord among naturalists that we do not carry our readers farther in classification. Suffice it to say that literally from head to tail almost every