THE MASTODON. 523 
Bones of the Mastodon have been found at numerous places in the State of 
New York, especially in the western part. We quote from the New York Geo- 
logical Reports: ‘‘In the bank of a stream, in gravel and sand, near the town of 
Perrinton, and now in the Rochester Museum. 
‘In 1838, during the excavation of the Genesee Valley canal in the city of 
Rochester, a tusk, some bones of the head, several ribs and other bones were 
found, intermingled with gravel and sand, and covered by clay and loam, and 
above these a deposit of shell marl, The tusk was nine feet long. 
‘‘During the excavation of the Erie canal, a large molar tooth was found in 
a swamp near Holley, Orleans county. 
- ‘Tn the fine gravel and loam, containing fresh water shells, and evidently a 
fluviatile deposit, at Niagara Falls, a molar tooth was found. 
‘‘In a muck swamp in Stafford, Genesee county, a small molar tooth was 
found. In 1841, a molar tooth, weighing two pounds, was found in a bed of 
marl three miles south of Leroy. At Geneseo, in Livingston county, a large 
number of bones and several teeth were found in a swamp, beneath a deposit of 
muck, intermingled with a sandy, calcareous marl. 
‘© At Hinsdale, Cattaraugus county, a tusk, with some horns of deer, were 
found, sixteen feet below the surface, in gravel and sand. 
‘©At Jamestown, Chautauqua county, a tooth of a Mastodon was found, 
several feet beneath the surface, in gravel. 
“(In speaking of the occurrence of these bones, Prof. James Hall says that 
these bones often occur imbedded in gravel and sand of the nature of the ordinary 
drift; but, in such instances, it can usually be shown that they have been trans- 
ported and the deposit in which they occur is one of very modern origin.* 
The marl beds and muck swamps rest upon the drift. ‘The gravel beds occur- 
ting with the bones are evidently of transported drift. 
‘©The earliest records that we have of the bones of the Mastodon is a letter 
from Cotton or Increase Mather to the Royal Society of London, between 1650 
and 1700, describing the bones of one of these animals found near Albany.f 
‘¢The bones of the Mastodon are frequently found in the peat bogs of Orange 
and Ulster counties. Bones of Mastodon were found in 1790—’91, and in 1800, 
in the town of Montgomery, twelve miles from Newburgh, Orange county. 
They were ten feet below the surface, in a peat bog. One of the leg bones meas- 
‘ured more than forty inches around the joint, and thirty-six on the cylindrical 
part of the bone, and nearly five feet long; the teeth, nearly seven inches long 
and four broad, were found white, fast in the jaw, and with no appearance of 
decay. The orifice in the back bone, where the marrow was, was three and a 
half inches in diameter. Eight similar skeletons have been discovered within 
eight or ten miles of this, some of them fifteen to twenty feet below the surface. 
A Mastodon, exhumed at Newburgh in 1845, indicated the following dimensions: 
Height, 11 feet; length to base of tail, 17 feet; tusks, 12 feet long—2¥ feet 
 *Nat. His. N. Y., part 4, Geology, 4th Dis. p. 365. 
f{ Ibid. Geology, Ist Dist., p. 47. 
