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hard work they were rewarded with grand success and were able to ship to Philadelphia one skeleton that lacked principally the lower jaw and the top of the head. What was lacking in this skeleton was found in another from a nearby bog. The bones of the two animals were not mixed. When the skeletons were set up the missing parts were carved out of wood, so that there were finished two complete skeletons. "Although putting these skeletons together" to return again to the autobiography, "was a long and arduous work; yet the novelty of the subject, the producing the form, and, as it would seem a second creation, was delightful; and every day's work brought forth its pleasure."

Up to this time many scattered bones and teeth of the mastodon had been found in this country. They had been described as belonging to a race of gigantic man, to the fathers of cattle, to hippopotomi, etc. In a letter to Geffroy Saint-Hilaire describing his find Peale states that this animal should be called the carnivorous elephant of the north, but should not be confounded with the Siberian mammoth. Cuvier in his memoir "Le Grand Mastodonte" writes:

Mais pendant que nous travail lions ainsi en Europe sur quelques fragmens de cet animal, M. Peale continuait à en recueillir les os, et il avait été assez heureux pour en obtenir deux squelettes presque complets qui ont décidé la question pour toujours (p. 261).

In 1802 the state legislature moved to Lancaster. This left the State House (Independence Hall) vacant. Peale petitioned the