24 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Dutchess County 



22, 23 1854 Poughkeepsie. Two skeletons, presumably of 

 mastodons, have been found in the vicinity of Poughkeepsie, one 

 in 1854, the other previous to that date. Concerning these finds 

 Doctor Clarke states, 23 " 'A skeleton of a mastodon has been recently 

 discovered buried, in a marsh about 2 miles from Poughkeepsie, 

 New York. Its state of perfection is not known, as it is yet but 

 partly exhumed. This is the second skeleton obtained from the 

 vicinity of this city'. (Am. Jour. Sci., ser. 2, 1854, 18:447.) 



" This seems to me to be the same find recently described to me 

 by Prof. W. B. Dwight, who writes : ' The chief find of mastodon 

 bones here occurred 40 or perhaps 45 years ago in a small circular 

 pond (in an unusually dry season I believe) on what is called the 

 Creek road, and from 2 to 3 miles northeasterly from the city. The 

 bones were of large size and were, I think, put into the hands of a 

 library association called the Lyceum. What became of them 

 nobody knows.' 



"A vertebra from Poughkeepsie is in the State Museum." 



A brief account of the mastodon remains found in 1854 is con- 

 tained in a letter dated Sing Sing, N. Y., September 22, 1854, writ- 

 ten by Spencer F. Baird, former secretary of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, to James Hall. Regarding this occurrence Professor 

 Baird says, " When at Poughkeepsie yesterday morning, I learned 

 that some large bones, supposed to be mastodon, had been discov- 

 ered in digging marl near the city." A memorandum accompany- 

 ing the letter states, " that the bones found appear to have been a 

 large vertebra and some splinters of other bones lying in the shelly 

 marl bed. The locality was visited by Professor Baird." 



24 1899. Hyde Park road. The following account from 

 Poughkeepsie of the remains of a mastodon or mammoth was 

 printed in the New York Herald, of November 20, 1899: "Por- 

 tions of a mastodon have been found in Dutchess county, in a 

 swamp on the old Macpherson place, in the Hyde Park road, near 

 the country homes of Frederick W. Vanderbilt and other prominent 

 New York persons. Workmen digging a drain found several frag- 

 ments of heavy bone 15 feet below the surface, and some feet 

 deeper part of a mammoth tusk. 



" Mr Edward Storrs Atwater, a wealthy resident of this city, has 

 obtained the bone and will present it to Vassar College. The col- 

 lege officials are desirous of making further excavations in the 



21 N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 69, 1903, p. 927. 



