34 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Madison County 



37 1917. Canastota. The discovery of these remains was re- 

 ported by Dr Burnett Smith, of Syracuse University, and a brief 

 account of the find was published by Doctor Clarke (N. Y. State 

 Mus. Bui. 196, p. 46, 1918). The bones were found in 1917 at an 

 elevation of 420 feet while a drainage ditch was being dug in muck 

 on the farm then owned by Mrs J. B. Fuller, 4 miles north from 

 Canastota and 2}4 miles south from Lewis point on the south shore 

 of Oneida lake, which is 123 feet above the level of Lake Ontario 

 and within the limits of glacial Lake Iroquois. The parts found 

 consisted of femur, ulna, radius, tibia, patella and three ribs. A 

 photograph of the larger leg bones was shown to Dr W. D. Mat- 

 thew and by him identified as those of a mastodon. The bones were 

 all found close together, in muck at a depth not exceeding 3 feet 

 from the surface. Efforts to obtain the bones for the Museum 

 were unavailing as the owners hoped to procure the remaining ones 

 for assembling a complete skeleton. Difficulties encountered with 

 water gave but little encouragement to hopes for final success of 

 the enterprise. The locality for this mastodon is less than 3 miles 

 from the place, and at nearly the same elevation, where an incisor 

 of the giant beaver 42 was found. This mastodon find is of special 

 interest because the remains occurred well within the basin of 

 glacial Lake Iroquois, thus indicating the presence of the living 

 mastodon in this section after the withdrawal of glacial waters and 

 the extinction of Lake Iroquois. At this time the glacier also had 

 retreated far enough to the north to again establish the St Law- 

 rence drainage. 



Monroe County 



38 1813?, 1830, 1833. Perinton. In a letter, to the editor of 

 the American Journal of Science and Arts, dated Pittsford, October 

 26, 1830, J. A. Guernsey states : 



I have just procured a piece of a tusk found 3 weeks since in the bank 

 of the Ironduqoit creek, 2 l / 2 miles from this place; a boy struck a spade 

 against the point of the tusk and broke it off, he then dug parallel to the 

 surface of the earth, about 5 feet below the sod, but he broke it into five 

 pieces. The entire length of all the pieces was 7^2 feet, and the whole 

 tusk must have measured 9 feet The exposure to the air causing it to 

 slack and crumble, I advised the possessor to lay it in a box of sand where 

 it now remains. 



The root or butt of the tusk is hollow for 18 inches. The longest piece 

 measures 2.2 inches in length, and 16^2 inches in circumference, weighing 



43 See article by Burnett Smith (Am. Jour. Sci., Nov. IQ14) for detailed 

 account of the incisor and descriptions of the Pleistocene formations of 

 the region. 



