374 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



in alcohol to remove the coating of dark varnish with which 

 they had been covered, thus restoring the hue they had when 

 unearthed. 



The following are the detailed measurements of the re- 

 markable specimen of the American mastodon: 



Length, base of tusks to drop of tail 14 ft. 11 in. 



Height to top of spine at back at the shoulders . . . 9 ft. 2 in. 



Tusks: length of right tusk in outside curve . . . . 8 ft. 6 in. 



length of tusk exposed 7 ft. 



Thigh bones: length of right 3 ft. 5 in. 



length of left 3 ft. 6^ in. 



Pelvis, or innominate bones, width of 6 ft. 



Within the territorial limits of New York State a very 

 considerable number of mastodon remains have been dis- 

 covered at various times. One of the most important of 

 these finds was made at Cohoes, New York, in September, 

 1866, in the course of excavations for the foundations of 

 a mill.* At a depth of twenty-five feet below the surface 

 the workmen came upon the lower jaw of a mastodon and a 

 single bone of the animal's foot; these rested upon a rock 

 projection between two depressions or concave walls of 

 small pot-holes at the margin of a larger pot-hole. The 

 excavation resulted in the removal of a mass of earth and 

 clay which had been filled in at some former time to cover 

 a swampy depression of considerable extent. The dis- 

 covery of the jawbone and the other single bone suggested 

 the probability that further digging would reveal the pres- 

 ence of an entire skeleton, and the peaty earth and frag- 

 ments of trees were removed from the deepest part of the 

 pot-hole, where the remains would most likely be found. 

 This conjecture proved to be correct, for at the bottom, 



*James Hall, "Notes and Observations on the Cohoes Mastodon"; Twenty-first Annual 

 Report of the Regents of the University of New York; appendix, pp. 99-148. 



