58 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



terial from which the slide was prepared, received through the 



kindness of Mr Morehouse, was obtained in Wayland, N.- Y., and 



he had sent it to Dr J. G. Hunt, of Philadelphia, for determination 



and preparation. Respecting this material Doctor Hunt reports as 



follows : 



The remains, both of cryptogams and flowering species, were in abun- 

 dance. Stems and leaves of mosses, wonderfully distinct in structure, so 

 much so that I could draw every cell. I even readily detected confervoid 

 filaments, with cells arranged in linear series, resembling species now 

 found in our waters. Numerous small black bodies, probable spores of 

 the mosses, were found in abundance. .Not a fragment of sphagnum was 

 seen in the deposit. I found, however, one fragment of a water plant, 

 possibly a rush, an inch long, every cell of which was as distinct as though 

 growing but yesterday. Pieces of woody tissue and of bark of herbaceous 

 plants, spiral vessels, etc., were abundant. Carapaces of Entomostraca 

 were present, but no trace of coniferous plants could be detected. It hence 

 appears that the animal ate his last meal from the tender mosses and 

 boughs of flowering plants growing .on the banks of the streams and mar- 

 gins of the swamps, rather than fed on submerged plants; and it is prob- 

 able, moreover, that the pines and cedars, and their allies, formed no part 

 of the mastodon's diet. 



The above account does not give any information concerning the 

 find, but in a footnote in "A History of Livingston County, New 

 York " 5 the following is printed : " Within the last 2 years several 

 bones of a mastodon were discovered on the borders of the county 

 near Dansville, some 8 feet below the surface, a portion of which 

 are now in the possession of Professor Allen of the State Normal 

 School at Geneseo." 



Dansville is 5 miles west of Wayland, and the county line passes 

 between them less than 2 miles from Dansville. The dates given 

 in the above brief accounts show that the year was 1874, and 

 therefore both undoubtedly relate to the same find in the town of 

 Wayland, Steuben county. 



89 1907. Perkinsville (plate 11). The remains of the Perkins- 

 ville mastodon are in the State Museum and an account of this find 

 has been given by Clarke, 6 who states : 



This skeleton was found in August last by John Morsch on his farm 

 near the west end of Perkinsville swamp and three-fourths of a mile north 

 of the railroad station of Portway. This swamp is a nearly equilateral 

 triangle about i l / 2 miles on the side. It occupies a shallow depression in 

 a mass of morainic drift of unknown depth at the head of the Cohocton 

 valley and is adjacent to the west side of a low ridge that separates the 

 drainage area of the Cohocton river from that of the Canaseraga creek. 

 It has an altitude of 1360 A. T. The surface layer of the swamp is black 

 muck to a depth of 6" — • 1', beneath which is a bed of nearly white marl 

 6" — 6' in thickness. The bones were found about 26 rods from the highway 

 and 4 or 5 rods from the north edge of the black soil or border of the 

 swamp. In digging about a small boulder Mr. Morsch came upon one of the 



6 By Lockwood A. Doty, Geneseo, 1876, p. 381. 

 8 N. Y. State Mus. Bui. 121, 1908, p. 44, 45. 



