FOSSIL BONES AND TEETH OP ROCKLAND. 



the bones had been disinterred. The proprietor declared 

 his knowledge of the fact. To convince ourselves, we, 

 and our attending friends, went into the quarry and dug 

 out bones of land-animals with our own hands. They 

 were in fragments ; but the articulation and points of mus- 

 cular insertion are evident in several of them. The spe- 

 cimens I brought away are now in my collection. 



/ 



These relicks were not petrified; but lay scattered 

 through a loamy bed, upon which were a stratum of sand- 

 stone, eight feet thick^ and another of arable soil, four 

 feet thick. 



The place where we found them is but a few rods from 

 the right bank of the Hudson. 



Rockland county has afforded another fossil phenome- 

 non. Eleven miles west of the spot where bones of 

 quadrupeds lie buried under strata of sandstone, and only 

 thirty-two north of this city, the remains of a mastodon 

 were found in July, 1817. Mr. Edward Suffern, jun. has 

 obligingly put the set of grinders, all that remained 

 of the skeleton, at my disposal. Figures of one of these 

 are given in plate II. fig. 1 and 2. They were acci- 

 dentally discovered by a ditcher, who was opening a 

 trench on his father's farm at New Antrim, in the town of 

 Hempstead. They lay in mud, only three feet below 

 the surface. They were large, and the enamel remarka- 

 bly white and glossy. The roots were much decay- 

 ed. The generous donor informed me the cavities of 

 these teeth contained a fatty substance. None of this, 

 however, remained when they were brought to me. 



3. The breach in the vicinity of Quebec, by the rive* 

 St. Lawrence. 



