support, including that of phonetic writing, further than to call
attention to the fact that by a curious coincidence one of the tablets
contains, among a number of familiar animals, figures which suggest in a
rude way the mastodon again, which animal indeed some archæologists have
confidently asserted them to be. The resemblance they bear to that
animal is, however, by no means as close as exhibited by the pipe
carvings; they are therefore not reproduced here. Both figures differ
from the pipes in having tails; both lack trunks, and also tusks.

Archæologists must certainly deem it unfortunate that outside of the
Wisconsin mound the only evidence of the co-existence of the
Mound-Builder and the mastodon should reach the scientific world through
the agency of one individual. So derived, each succeeding carving of the
mastodon, be it more or less accurate, instead of being accepted by
archæologists as cumulative evidence tending to establish the
genuineness of the sculptured testimony showing that the Mound-Builder
and mastodon were coeval, will be viewed with ever increasing suspicion.

This part of the subject should not be concluded without allusion to a
certain class of evidence, which, although of a negative sort, must be
accorded very great weight in considering this much vexed question. It
may be asked why if the Mound-Builders and the mastodon were
contemporaneous, have no traces of the ivory tusks ever been exhumed
from the mounds? No material is so perfectly adapted for the purposes of
carving, an art to which we have seen the Mound-Builders were much
addicted, as ivory, both from its beauty and the ease with which it is
worked, to say nothing of the other manifold uses to which it is put,
both by primitive and civilized man. The mastodon affords an abundant
supply of this highly prized substance, not a particle of which has ever
been exhumed from the mounds either in the shape of implements or