MASTODONS, MAMMOTHS AND OTHER PLEISTOCENE MAMMALS 53 



" When laborers were excavating and building the canal embank- 

 ment, a tooth of some huge animal, a mammoth, perhaps, was dug 

 up. The tooth was a grinder, and weighed 2 pounds and 2 ounces. 

 No other bones of such a creature have been found, and it has been 

 conjectured this tooth must have been shed there by the animal to 

 which it belonged, when it came after salt. It is now in the State 

 collection in Albany." The tooth above described may be the one 

 referred to by DeKay 95 when he says, " There is, however, in the 

 museum of the Albany Institute, a portion of the tooth of an ele- 

 phant said to have been found on the line of the Erie canal, but the 

 precise locality is not known." During the construction of the 

 Erie canal a true mammoth was found at Chittenango, and it is 

 possible that DeKay's reference is to one of the teeth of the Chit- 

 tenango specimen. DeKay does not state whether or not he saw 

 the tooth, and because it can not be found among the collections of 

 the Albany Institute, there is some doubt as to whether it belonged 

 to a mammoth or mastodon. The Erie canal passes through Holley 

 at an elevation of 500 feet. The beach of glacial Lake Iroquois is 

 within 3 miles to the northeast of Holley so that the tooth was 

 found outside of the province of this glacial lake. We have thus 

 no evidence that the tooth was deposited through the agency of 

 glacial waters, unless it was by the higher waters of glacial Lake 

 Tonawanda, which had one of its outlets at Holley and whose 

 waters poured into Lake Iroquois. 96 



81 1894. Medina. Among the collections of the Buffalo Society 

 of Natural Sciences is a lower jaw with teeth of a mastodon. It 

 was found in a swamp about 4 miles from Medina by W. S. Slodge, 

 and through the efforts of Prof. F. K. Mixer was presented to the 

 Buffalo museum by John Moore. 



Queens County 



82 1858. Jamaica. The following is the account of the Jamaica 

 specimen, as given by J. C. Brevoort : 97 



Five molar teeth and a few fragments of bones belonging to the Ameri- 

 can Mastodon were found on Long Island toward the end of last 

 March, by the workmen engaged in removing the pond muck at the head 

 of Baiseley's pond near Jamaica. This pond is an artificial one, covering 

 some 40 acres in a shallow valley, and is one of the series of five similar 

 ponds which are now being prepared and cleaned out for the purpose of 

 affording a water supply to the city of Brooklyn. In Baiseley's pond a 



"Nat. Hist. N. Y., Zool. pt 1, 1842, p. 101. 



"U. S. G. S. Niagara Folio, 100, p. 19, fig. 10. 



"A, A. A. S.Proc. 12th meeting, May 1858 (1859) p. 232-33. 



