Account of the skeleton of the mammoth, a non-descript carnivorous animal of immense size, found in America / By Rembrandt Peale.

  • Rembrandt Peale
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Account of the skeleton of the mammoth, a non-descript carnivorous animal of immense size, found in America / By Rembrandt Peale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dence between the number of vertebras an^ ribs in both animals, that there were nineteen pair of the latter, it was only necessary in four or five instances where there was not a complete pair, either to make an artificial counterpart, or to take the same formed rib from the collection found at Captain Barber’s. In this manner the two skeletons were formed, and are in both in¬ stances composed of the appropriate bones of the animal, or exact imitations from the real bones in the same animal, or from those of the same proportion in the other: Nothing is ima¬ ginary, and what we do not unquestionably know, we leave deficient; which happens in only two instances, the summit of the head and the end of the tail. The tusk which belongs to the skeleton at Philadelphia, I have brought with me: in taking it from the ground it was broken into three pieces, but they were carefully put together, and give the intire form, composed of a strong arch and a spiral twist resembling an ox’s horn, ten feet six inches in length and twenty-one inches in circumference. In the Leverian Museum there is a fossil elephant’s tusk found in England, about seven feet in length : On making a com¬ parison between these it will be observed, that v
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