PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
NATURAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 
OF STATEN 
ISLAND. 
VoL. VII. No. to. 
OcToBER 14th, 1899. 
The regular meeting of the Association 
was held at the Staten Island Academy, 
with the president in the chair. 
Mr, Wm. Allaire Shortt, Tompkins- 
ville, was elected an active member. 
Dr. Arthur Hollick exhibited cones of 
white spruce and a broken molar of a 
mastodon, and read the following paper: 
A QUATERNARY LAKE DEPOSIT IN THE 
MORAVIAN CEMETERY. 
In our last Proceedings I mentioned 
the discovery ofa buried forest, under 
what appeared to be a layer of bowlder 
drift, in a morainal basin at the Fox 
Hills golf links. Since that fact was re- 
corded I became interested in what ap- 
peared to be a similar deposit in the 
Moravian Cemetery, where for some time 
past the work of cleaning out a swamp 
has been in progress, in the rear of the 
Kunhardt Mausoleum. The surface con- 
sisted of peat and a black organic mud, such 
as may be seenin any swamp where decay- 
ing vegetation has accumulated, but be- 
low this was a more sandy deposit and 
when this was reached a quantity of logs 
and large branches were brought to light 
and the similarity to the Fox Hills ma- 
terial was at once apparent. There was, 
however, nothing to indicate that these 
were anything more than the remains of 
a comparatively recent forest growth. It 
was not until a layer containing a large 
number of small cones was reached that 
I began to realize that it must represent 
a period in which different conditions ex- 
isted from those which now prevail here. 
A careful examination of the cones show- 
ed them to belong to the white spruce 
(Picea Canadensis B.S. P.)—a tree of 
northern range, which does not now 
grow further south than northern New 
York, Vermont, New Hampshire and 
Maine—and this fact naturally led to the 
suspicion that at least the lower portion 
of the deposit :night be of Quaternary 
age. 
On inquiry, the superintendent of the 
the cemetery, Mr. N. J. Ostrander, vol- 
unteered the information that ‘some 
bones’”’ had been dug up which he very 
kindly gave to me for the Association. 
They prove to be the broken pieces of a 
mastodon’s molar, thus proving beyond 
doubt the Quaternary age of at least the 
lower part of the deposit and justifying 
the belief that even the logs and branches 
above are probably the remains ofa forest 
growth which antedated that which is 
now in existence in the vicinity. It also 
strengthens the suspicion that the Fox 
Hills buried forest may also represent 
former similar conditions. 
The swamp, which covered a superficial 
area of about 3,500 square feet, was former- 
ly rather a conspicuous feature, by reason 
of its pool of dark coffee-colored water and 
quaking margin of peat and sedges, occu- 
pying a depression in the rolling morainal 
surface, filling up and overflowing in time 
of rains and becoming almost or complete- 
ly dry in periods of drought. Its appear- 
ance, however, became incongruous with 
the recent development of the Cemetery 
and the decision was reached to drain off 
the water, dig out the miud and allow the 
excavation to fill up again as a pond. 
The location is about 1,200 ft. from the 
soutbern border of the moraine, at an ele- 
vation of about 120 ft. above tide level. 
