MASTODONS, MAMMOTHS AND OTHER PLEISTOCENE MAMMALS 41 



todon's tooth was found n feet below the surface." Lyell, 52 who 

 visited the locality in company with Hall, gives a more extended 

 account and has a figure which indicates the place where the re- 

 mains were found on the mainland opposite Goat island. 53 Lyell's 

 account follows: 



We began by collecting in Goat island shells 54 of the genera Unio, Cyclas, 

 Melania, Valvata, Limnea, Planorbis, and Helix, all of recent species, in 

 the superficial deposit. They form regular beds, and numerous indi- 

 viduals of the unio and Cyclas have both their valves united. We then 

 found the same formation exactly opposite to the falls on the top of the 

 cliff on the American side, where two river terraces, one 12 and the other 

 24 feet above the Niagara, have been cut in the modern deposits. In these 

 we observed the same fossil shells as in Goat Island, and learnt that the 

 teeth and other remains of a mastodon, some of which were shown us, 

 had been found 13 feet below the surface of the soil. We were then taken 

 by our guide to a spot farther north, where similar gravel and sand with 

 fluviatile shells occurred near the edge of the cliff overhanging the ravine, 

 resting on the solid limestone. It was about half a mile below the prin- 

 cipal fall, and extended at some points 300 yards inland, but no farther, 

 for it was then bounded by the bank of more ancient drift. This deposit 

 previsely occupies the place which the ancient bed and alluvial plain of the 

 Niagara would naturally have filled, if the river once extended farther 

 northwards, at a level sufficiently high to cover the greater part of Goat 

 island. At that period 1 the ravine could not have existed, and there must 

 have been a barrier, several miles lower down, at or near the whirlpool. 



A more recent account of the gravels at Niagara Falls and their 

 age, together with many interesting observations relative to the 

 wearing back of the Niagara gorge since the gravels were deposited, 

 is given by Kindle and Taylor in the Niagara Folio (U. S. G. S. 

 no. 190, 1913). Brief extracts from this folio follow: "While 

 the falls were still below the whirlpool the river above that point 

 was flowing in a shallow bed, like that in which it now flows from 

 Buffalo to Chippewa. This bed was cut mainly in drift, and in the 

 cutting process the fine material was washed out and carried away 

 and the gravel was formed into bars. There are not many such 

 formations in the old bed of the river, but some very small ones 

 are well known through the fossil shells that have been found in 

 them. . . . Much the largest of the gravel deposits connected 

 with Niagara river are those on Goat island and in Prospect 

 Park and the city of Niagara Falls, N. Y. (page 14). ... Until 

 the falls had cut the gorge back to the vicinity of Swift Drift point, 

 about 1000 feet north of Hubbard point (nearly 2 miles below Goat 



5 * Travels in North America, 1845, 1:29, fig. p. 30. 



ts This find is apparently the one to which DeKay refers when he states, 

 "A tooth was found in digging a mill-race on Goat island, Niagara county, 

 12 or 13 feet below the surface." Nat. Hist. N. Y. Zool., pt 1, p. 104, 1842. 



'"* See " Post-Pliocene Fossils of the Niagara River Gravels," by Eliza- 

 beth J. Letson, N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 45, 1901, p. 238-52. 



