The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
great northern bones, or so rare as to found a suspicion that they
have been carried thither as curiosities from the northern regions.
So that, on the whole, there seem to be no certain vestiges of
the existence of this animal farther south than the salines just
mentioned. It is remarkable that the tusks and skeletons have
been ascribed by the naturalists of Europe to the elephant, while
the grinders have been given to the hippopotamus, or river horse.
Yet it is acknowledged, that the tusks and skeletons are much
larger than those of the elephant, and the grinders many times
greater than those of the hippopotamus, and essentially different
in form. Wherever these grinders are found, there also we find
the tusks and skeleton; but no skeleton of the hippopotamus nor
grinders of the elephant. It will not be said that the hippopotamus
and elephant came always to the same spot, the former to
deposit his grinders, and the latter his tusks and skeleton. For
what became of the parts not deposited there? We must agree
then, that these remains belong to each other, that they are of
one and the same animal, that this was not a hippopotamus, because
the hippopotamus had no tusks, nor such a frame, and because
the grinders differ in their size as well as in the number
and form of their points. That this was not an elephant, I think
ascertained by proofs equally decisive. I will not avail myself
of the authority of the celebrated[4] anatomist, who, from an examination
of the form and structure of the tusks, has declared
they were essentially different from those of the elephant; because
another[5] anatomist, equally celebrated, has declared, on a
like examination, that they are precisely the same. Between
two such authorities I will suppose this circumstance equivocal.
But, 1. The skeleton of the mammoth (for so the incognitum
has been called) bespeaks an animal of five or six times the cubic
volume of the elephant, as Mons. de Buffon has admitted. 2.
The grinders are five times as large, are square, and the grinding
surface studded with four or five rows of blunt points; whereas those
of the elephant are broad and thin, and their grinding surface flat.
3. I have never heard an instance, and suppose there has been
none, of the grinder of an elephant being found in America. 4.
From the known temperature and constitution of the elephant,
he could never have existed in those regions where the remains
of the mammoth have been found. The elephant is a native
only of the torrid zone and its vicinities; if, with the assistance
of warm apartments and warm clothing, he has been preserved
in the temperate climates of Europe, it has only been for a
small portion of what would have been his natural period, and
no instance of his multiplication in them has ever been known.
But no bones of the mammoth, as I have before observed, have
been ever found further south than the salines of Holston, and
they have been found as far north as the Arctic circle. Those,
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