bly through an ice dam ora drift barrier, or 
both, for some time in its history converted 
itinto a glacial lake. There seems to be 
some confirmatory evidence on this point, as 
on the northern slope of Ocean Terrace, hid- 
den completely in the woods, there is a nar- 
row shelf of earth and drift which suggests a 
remnant of an ancient beach—a smoothed 
and level shore strand. Again, on the east 
side of the valley, between Martling’s and 
Britton’s ponds, there is a high bank of gla- 
cial sand, which has been partially removed 
by artificial means, but which doubtless ex- 
tended farther west and may have originally 
formed a dam at this end of the glacial lake. 
The surface of this sand bank is ‘a level field 
and its elevation is approximately the same 
as the apparent fragment of the ancient shore 
bench on Ocean Terrace. 
If this surmise is correct the character of 
the dam at the gorge through which the Clove 
road passes is a matter for further observation 
to determine It was probably glacial At 
any rate the uplift of the continental rim, 
after the glacial period,tilted the valley floor- 
ing northward, and the drainage forced its 
way out along the section now occupied by 
the three ponds, and removed the western 
portion of the sand dam previously mentioned. 
We have thus a preglacial basin traversed 
by a preglacial channel or stream-bed, which 
_ was succeeded by a post-glacial lake The 
corroborative details of this theory or its re- 
futation may afford an interesting field for 
research for the members of the Association 
RECENT LITERATURE RELATING TO STATEN 
ISLAND. 
An Example of Deductive Reasoning. 
Arthur Hollick. 
The Plant World, Vol. iii (Dec 1900) pp. 
184, 185. 
A popular article describing the discovery 
of the Mastodon’s tooth in the Moravian 
Cemetery, with special reference to it as an 
example of reasoning from known facts to 
theoretical conclusions and the subsequent 
verification of the conclusions by the discoy- 
ery of additional facts 
The original account of the discovery was 
published in our Proceedings of October 14, 
1899 
silt 
