The aboriginal natives of North America called the Mastodon the _father of the ox_. A French officer named Fabri wrote thus to Buffon in 1748. The natives of Canada and Louisiana, where these remains are abundant, speak of the Mastodon as a fantastic creature which mingles in all their traditions and in their ancient national songs. Here is one of these songs, which Fabri heard in Canada: “When the great _Manitou_ descended to the earth, in order to satisfy himself that the creatures he had created were happy, he interrogated all the animals. The bison replied that he would be quite contented with his fate in the grassy meadows, where the grass reached his belly, if he were not also compelled to keep his eyes constantly turned towards the mountains to catch the first sight of the _father of oxen_, as he descended, with fury, to devour him and his companions.” The Cheyenne Indians have a tradition that these great animals lived in former times, conjointly with a race of men whose size was proportionate to their own, but that the _Great Being_ destroyed both by repeated strokes of his terrible thunderbolts. The native Indians of Virginia had another legend. As these gigantic Elephants destroyed all other animals specially created to supply the wants of the Indians, God, the thunderer, destroyed them; a single one only succeeded in escaping. It was “the great male, which presented its head to the thunderbolts and shook them off as they fell; but being at length wounded in the side, he took to flight towards the great lakes, where he remains hidden to this day.” All these simple fictions prove, at least, that the Mastodon has lived upon the earth at some not very distant period. We shall see, in fact, that it was contemporaneous with the Mammoth, which, it is now supposed, may have been co-existent with the earlier races of mankind, or only preceded a little the appearance of man. Buffon, as we have said, gave to this great fossil animal the name of the Elephant of the Ohio; it has also been called the Mammoth of the Ohio. In England it was received with astonishment. Dr. Hunter showed clearly enough, from the thigh-bone and the teeth, that it was no Elephant; but having heard of the existence of the Siberian Mammoth, he at once came to the conclusion that they were bones of that animal. He then declared the teeth to be carnivorous, and the idea of a _carnivorous elephant_ became one of the wonders of the day. Cuvier at once dissipated the clouds of doubt which surrounded the subject, pointing out the osteological differences between the several species, and giving to the American animal the appropriate name of Mastodon (from μαστος, _a teat_, and οδους, _a tooth_), or teat-like-toothed animal.