228 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 







bones found in the peat marshes or swamps were the remains of 

 those animals which had frequented these places in search of food 

 or saline water, as the deer frequent the salt licks, and becoming 

 mired in the soft mud, their remains had been preserved. Al- 

 though accepting this view of the subject, he had never regarded 

 it as a philosophical one, and with our former knowledge there 

 were many circumstances irreconcilable with that view. He 

 showed the relation of these peat swamps to the surrounding and 

 underlying deposits of drift, remarking that from the few in- 

 stances in which bones or teeth had been found in gravel it had 

 been supposed that they were derived from their original position 

 in the swamp by the more recent breaking up of the deposit and 

 their distribution in modern streams." He showed, moreover, 

 from the nature of the surrounding deposits, that whatever might 

 have been the original distribution of the bones of those animals, 

 none would have been preserved except those covered by the mud 

 and peaty deposit. He also adverted to the fact that a few teeth 

 or bones had been found in the midst of a bog under circumstances 

 that had proved them to have been deposited as they were found, 

 and not to have come there as a part of the entire animal. Ad- 

 verting to the conditions surrounding the Cohoes mastodon, he 

 showed that the river for some miles west of Cohoes, and thence 

 to the Hudson River, was now running in a modern channel, hav- 

 ing left the old channel, which was filled with drift. This mod- 

 ern channel has cut deeply into the rocks of the Hudson River 

 group which form the bed and banks of the stream. On the 

 south-west side of the river, and at an elevation of about 125 feet 

 above its bed, the plateau of rock had been excavated for the 

 foundation of a mill by the Harmony Mills Company of Cohoes. 

 The entire area of more than 400 feet in length, and more than 

 20(J feet in width, was marked by pot-holes penetrating to a 

 greater or less depth into the rock, some of them only a few 

 feet in depth, and others 40 or 50 feet deep, with a diameter in 

 some parts nearly as great. Many, if not all these pot-holes, are 

 smaller at the top than below. In some cases several smaller pot- 

 holes have been worn into one. During this excavation in Septem- 

 ber, 1866, the lower jaw of a mastodon was found in one of the 

 smaller pot-holes, which communicated with a larger one, and at 

 the depth of about 25 feet below the original surface of the rock. 

 In continuing the excavation there was found in the bottom of an 

 adjacent larger pot-hole a large part of the skeleton of the masto- 

 don, including the skull, many of the vertebrae and ribs, one 

 scapula, and a nearly complete fore limb, one-half the pelvis, and 

 one hind limb, with the femur of the other, beside a few other 

 bones. These were all on one side of the pot-hole, while at a dis- 

 tance of 20 feet on the other side several bones were found. This 

 point was about 25 feet below the level at which the lower jaw 

 was found, and some 60 feet or more distant from and to the east- 

 \vard of the point where the jaw was found. Several months 

 later, in excavating on the outside of the mill, a part of the bones 

 of the fore leg were found in a pot-hole at or near the same level 

 on which the jaw was found, and 50 feet or more distant to the 



