At Cincinnati, Ohio, Lewis gives his crew another day to rest and extends his stay. On or near this date, he examines Dr. Goforth’s fossil bones that had been excavated from a nearby salt lick aptly named Big Bone Lick. He compares them with similar fossils that he had seen while preparing for the expedition in Philadelphia.
Goforth’s Fossil Bones
Peale’s Mastodon Skeleton
Pen-and-ink drawing by Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), courtesy American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
Cincinnati, October 3rd 1803.
Dear Sir [Thomas Jefferson],
All the bones, which I observed in the possession of Dr. Goforth appear to be those of the Mammoth, accept only the Elephant-like grin[d]ers; the most remarkable among them was a portion of the lower or larger part of a tusk measuring one foot ten inches in circumpherence and five feet eight inches in length[.] . . . the greatest circumpherence of the tusks of Mr. Peal’s skeleton I believe is not more than one foot six ½ inches. As the anatomy of the Mammoth has already been so well ascertained by the skeleton in the possession of Mr. Peal (the upper portion of the head excepted) I confined my enquiries mearly to a search for this part of the skeleton, and ofr such specimens of the tusks so frequently found in the same bed with the acknowledged tusks of the Mammoth, are the tusks of that anamal, or a different one?
Meriwether Lewis. Capt.
1st. U.S. Regt. Infty.[1]Lewis to Jefferson. Ibid. 130.
Elephant’s Tooth
Tooth of Mastodon americanum, from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky
Jefferson Collection, Department of Vertebrate Zoology. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Above: This specimen was collected for Thomas Jefferson by William Clark in 1807. It was once part of Jefferson’s display at Monticello, and later in the President’s House in Washington City.
The Doctr. presented me with two handsome specimens, the one a grinder of the Elaphant, the other, that of the Mammoth . . . . The Elephants teeth which I saw in the possession of Dr. Goforth weigh from four to eleven pounds, and appear to me precisely to resemble a specimen of these teeth which, I saw in the possession of Dr. Wister [Caspar Wistar] of Philadelphia . . . .
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Notes
| ↑1 | Lewis to Jefferson. Ibid. 130. |
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