“Mammoth,” from Youth’s Companion; or An Historical Dictionary
by Ezra Sampson (1813)
This entertaining collection of bits on history, geography, and natural
history was compiled from a number of sources—some cryptically identified—and
was intended for readers of a variety of ages:
“Any readers of this book who can find little or nothing in it but what they
knew as well before, are respectfully informed that it is not meant for
them, but for people whose advantages have been fewer, or whose
knowledge is less extensive. It is designed more particularly as a
Companion for Youth; yet so as not to be a useless companion for mature
age. Much in a small compass, has been my aim; and as I have generally
named the authors to whom I am indebted, so the reader will know to whose
writings he may have recourse for a more enlarged view of some of the
subjects which are here given in compendium.” (p. [iii])
Thus we have paragraphs on William Herschel and cannabis, harmonic duels and
diving bells. And the mammoth—not the first time this prehistoric beast
was described in an American work for
children.
There was a lot of confusion about the mammoth and the mastodon at the time
this paragraph was written.
Huge bones
had been found for centuries in what is now Kentucky, and Charles Willson
Peale had cobbled together an almost-complete
skeleton; but whether or
not the beast was carnivorous and what an elephant was doing on the North
American continent puzzled naturalists and museum owners alike. An excellent
exploration of the history of discoveries at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, is
Stanley Hedeen’s Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology
(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2008). Paul Semonin has
published a detailed discussion of how naturalists struggled to understand the
mastodon in American Monster: How the Nation’s First Prehistoric
Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity (New York: New York
University Press, 2000.
Sampson’s collection was first published in 1807, in Hudson, New York. My
copy is of the second edition, “with sundry emendations, retrenchments and
enlargements.”
http://www.merrycoz.org/books/sampson/MAMMOTH.xhtml
“Mammoth,” from Youth’s Companion; or An Historical Dictionary, by Ezra Sampson. (Albany: Websters and Skinners, 1813; p. 229)
MAMMOTH, an animal of an extraordinary size. The name
Mammoth is said to have been first given to this animal in Russia;
and that it is a corruption from Memoth, a word derived from the
Arabic; its fossil bones have been found in Siberia, and in several
parts of the United States of America, particularly on the Ohio, and in the
state of New-York towards the lakes; some being found lying on the surface
of the earth, and some a little below it. Naturalists are not agreed
respecting the genus of this animal. According to Dr. Miller, Mr. Peale of
Philadelphia, proprietor of the Museum of that city, in the year 1781,
succeeded in obtaining two complete skeletons of the Mammoth dug out of marl
pits, in the state of New-York; and from inspection of these skeletons it
appears they are the remains of elephants. On the other hand, it is
stated in Mr. Jefferson’s Notes, that the skeleton of the mammoth bespeaks
an animal of five or six times the cubic volume of the elephant; that 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: that the natives
describe this animal as still existing in the northern and western parts of
their country, and affirm him to be carnivorious. [sic] It is not
easy to conceive how the bones of elephants should be scattered over the
cold regions of Siberia, and in North America, unless their carcases
[sic] were wafted thither by the general deluge; since these animals
are natives of the hot climates of Asia and Africa, and if even there were
no seas or mountains to prevent their excursions, would hardly wander a vast
distance into frozen regions where they cannot live in winter without a warm
shelter.