12 
The PRESIDENT referred to an article which had lately 
been published in various papers, concerning the discovery 
of ancient human remains, of large size, in Ohio, and ex- 
pressed his incredulity in reference to the whole account. 
He proceeded to mention the mammalian remains of the 
Ohio drift, and to assign to them their exact horizon. The 
mastodon and elephant occur in the peat marshes, and 
reach from a very remote period, down almost to the pres- 
ent time. Their first appearance was in the “ Forest Bed,” 
as he had termed it, which is overlaid by the iceberg drift, 
and underlaid first by the Erie (or Champlain) clays, and 
then, lower down, by the true glacial drift. After the great 
ice-sheet of the glacial era had passed away, there was a 
depression of nearly a thousand feet, and a vast submergence 
of much of the northern interior beneath an expanse of cold, 
fresh waters, which laid down the Erie clays. The land 
seems then to have risen, and for some time to have sustained 
quite a wide-spread vegetation, of boreal character, consisting 
largely of coniferee. In this cool-climate period, the great 
mammals above referred to appear; they are never found in 
any of the underlying glacial deposits. Then there came 
another northern depression, and a second submergence, 
even greater than the former. The forests were destroyed, 
and covered up with the deposits of this new inland sea, 
which are largely sand, gravel, and boulders borne by floating 
ice from the farther North. The animals retreated now to 
the heights of Southern Ohio, and to the Alleghanies, whence 
they again descended when the land rose, and the iceberg sea 
gradually dwindled into our present chain of the Great Lakes ; 
and they would seem then to have followed the retreating 
cold climate to the shores of the Arctic sea, where their 
numerous remains indicate their last abiding-place. The 
great extinct beaver, Castoroides Ohioensis, also appeared in 
the old Forest Bed; but it has never been found in the more 
modern bogs, and would seem to have died out during the 
second submergence. 
