MASTODONS, MAMMOTHS AND OTHER PLEISTOCENE MAMMALS 75 



sisting of large pebbles with no filling between them. Fine and coarse layers 

 alternate in sharply defined beds. Some of the stones are 8 to 12 inches in 

 diameter. Most of the material is well rounded, but some of the larger 

 stones are not, their edges and angles retaining some prominence. The gravel 

 is bedded, the beds dipping steeply southeastward, in some places nearly 

 south, in others nearly east, and there is almost no evidence of ordinary 

 cross-bedding. Only in one or two places has even the slightest discord- 

 ance of bedding been observed. The most remarkable aspect of the de- 

 posit is the depth of the gravel and the depth to which the inclined beds 

 go without break or change. At times the exposure has shown individual 

 beds running to a depth of 40 feet and the bottom was not then exposed. 

 A considerable part of the gravel is cemented into a hard conglomerate. The 

 deposit appears to be thickest at the pits, but it extends northward along the 

 bank of the river for half a mile or more, thinning out in that direction. 

 On the surface the beds give no evidence of their presence except that the 

 ground is stony and sandy; their surface is merely a part of the surf-worn 

 plain lying in front of the Iroquois beach. . . . The ridge of the Iroquois 

 beach or spit that runs west through the village of Lewiston comes to the 

 bank of the river at the gravel pits and unconformably overlies the coarse, 

 steeply inclined beds. The beach is composed of fine gravel or coarse sand, 

 entirely unlike the material of the inclined beds. 



Some of the characteristics of the coarse gravel suggested at first that 

 it may be a bar of initial Lewiston torrent, but excavations have gone on 

 more rapidly in the last 5 years and the new exposures, coupled with the 

 finding of the bones of a mastodon at a depth of 18 to 20 feet in the gravel, 

 seem to show that it is of Iroquois age. Gravel was drifted along shore 

 from the east and was built into a large spit that pushed out into the* 

 deep water of Niagara river and at its west end hooked around to the 

 south. The inclined beds shown in the pits appear to have been built off 

 the south end of the hook or on the rear side of a subaqueous bar. The 

 work was done mainly soon after the level of Lake Iroquois was raised 

 from the 'Newfane level and probably in part during the transition, the 

 spit during that time migrating up the slope. As the shore line was cut 

 farther into the land the upper part of the older gravel was cut off. 



The location of the deposits of sand and gravel of the Lewiston 

 spit is well shown on the map (Niagara gorge) of the folio above 

 cited, and under the legend is the statement " Coarse spit gravel 

 (deposited as spits by waves and currents when lake was rising 1 

 from Newfane to Iroquois beach level, 20 to 40 feet thick)." 



Onondaga County 



9 1867. Salina. (E. primigenius.) In 1867 the State 

 Museum received as a donation from Ira A. Gilchrist 38 of Salina 

 " part of a fossil elephant's tooth, from the gravel of Salina. The 

 section showed a depth of 15 feet above the point where /two ele- 

 phant's teeth are said to have been taken out." The tooth in the 

 Museum is light in color. We have no information relative to the 

 two teeth said to have been obtained 115 feet deeper. Part of 

 another tooth in the Museum may have come from this locality but 

 we have no positive evidence as the label is old and may have been 

 misplaced. 





N. Y. State Cabinet Nat. Hist., 21st Annual Rep't, 1871, p. 16. 



