Miscellanies. . 201 
which should be formed in small castings in the shape of a horse 
shoe, each weighing about seven ounces; these he finds, on being 
touched in the usual manner by-a small compound magnet, received 
and retained the impregnation better than any which he had pre- 
viously constructed of steel—Atheneum, Aug. 26, 1837. 
13. Bones of the Mammoth.—A part of a mammoth has this day 
(Aug. 19th) been uncovered in excavating the Genesee Valley Ca- 
nal, where it crosses Sophia street, in this city. Two ribs, a part of the 
skull, and of a bone of a leg, and an enormous tusk, have been found. 
The last, which must have been eight or ten feet lone, was chiefly 
picked to pieces by the Irish laborers, who supposed it to be a log’, as 
it had lost its gelatine; about a foot of the smaller end is entire, and 
there can be no doubt what it once was. It must have been eight 
inches in diameter in the middle. One rib, which seems to have been 
a short rib, is in a fine state of preservation. Whether the ani- 
mal was an elephant or a mastodon is uncertain. ‘These remains 
were found about four feet below the surface in a hollow or water- 
course, lying on and in a very hard body of blue clay, and about two 
feet above the polished limestone, which underlies so great a portion 
of this city. 
The upper surface of the limestone, which is covered with soil 
and earth from two to six and sometimes to twelve and twenty feet 
deep under Rochester, is not merely smoothed, but actually polished, 
making a very good transition marble. It has in one line been dug 
through for a hundred rods; in others, it has been exposed ten to 
twenty rods in length; and again, opened only in digging wells. It 
seems to underlie many hundred acres. OFn DE 
Rochester, August 19th, 1837. 
14. Newly discovered Ichnolites—Facts or specimens in that 
department of natural history which may be termed Ichnology, or 
ths science of stone tracks, seem te be rapidly accumulating. Among 
other localities which have been lately discovered may be mentioned 
one at Middletown, Ct. where several successive tracks, belonging 
probably to the ornithichnites of Prof. Hitchcock, may be traced 
on a layer of micaceous shale in the sandstone formation, the tracks 
being of a medium size and about fourteen inches asunder. At the 
same locality, which is about one mile and a half southeast of the 
Wesleyan University, there have been also found several tracks of 
Vou. XXXIIIL—No. 1. 26 
