MASTODON REMAINS IN NEW YORK 537 



(c) The causes of depauperation in Pyrite faunas. Investigations of the organic 

 contents of the sheet of pyrite lying in the horizon of the Tully Hmestone for a 

 distance of 100 miles in western New York give some clew to the causes which 

 have effected like results in similar occurrences of other age. 



id) The determination of the uppermost Cambric in eastern New York, being 

 the discovery of the horizon of Dictyoneraa and Clonograptus in Rensselaer county. 



The fifth and last paper of the morning session was by the same 

 author. 



DISTRIBUTION OF MASTODON REMAINS IN NEW YORK 

 BY JOHN M. CLARKE 



lAbstracf] 



About sixty of these occurrences, extending over the period of 1705-1903, have 

 been recorded. This list is of interest in more than one particular. Forty years 

 ago the plains of the west and southwest swarmed with immense herds of buffalo 

 whose bones, left on the ground, have gone as completely as have their bodies. 

 The dry air and arid soil have reduced to dust millions of these skeletons. In the 

 moist and cold climate of the postglacial east, where the mastodon must have 

 traversed New York in much the same abundance as the buffalo did the west, the 

 water-soaked soil has preserved now and again a skeleton of this race. Not every 

 Mastodon americcmus ended his days in a peat bog. It is noted that these occur- 

 rences, specially when considerable parts of the skeleton have been found, are in 

 the swamps and bogs of floodplains and beaches which were river bottoms in the 

 high water period succeeding the ice. The fall of the water, with other condi- 

 tions, reduced these bottoms to pools on which vegetation gradually encroached, 

 but neither they themselves nor their contents can be of very ancient date. In 

 several instances the bones are found lying beneath the peat upon a coarse stone 

 pavement which indicates the existence there at a former date of a strong water- 

 course. We can not safely deny the presence of the mastodon here during the 

 early period of high water, but may conclude that he remained till a comparatively 

 recent date, when the floods had begun their retreat to their present confines. 



Worthy of notice also is the distribution of these skeletons. In two regions of 

 the state they have proved specially numerous. Orange county leads as the home 

 of mastodon remains with a record of 24, more or less, complete skeletons. The 

 lower Hudson Valley counties — Sullivan, Orange, Ulster, and Greene — afford 34 

 records. The region covered by Monroe, Ontario, Genesee, Livingston, Orleans, 

 and Wyoming counties records 14 skeletons or parts thereof These two regions 

 were evidently the feeding grounds of the mastodon, possibly its breeding places. 

 The series of swamps in the long Appalachian valleys of Orange and adjoining 

 counties runs southward into New Jersey, and there the bones are also found with 

 frequency. Throughout the belt or territory between the Delaware river on the 

 east and eastern Tompkins county on the west, a distance for about 100 miles, and 

 thence north and south across the state, no single instance of the presence of these 

 remains is shown by the record. This can not be due to the fact that swamps and 

 pools have not existed over this region, but must be ascribed to the gregarious 

 habits of the animals and to the fact that some inducement brought them together 

 in the other regions. But while western New York is a region of salt licks, and 

 the central region equally so, the lower Hudson presents no such inducements. 



