322 C. Schuchert and E. S. Lull— 



streets, there was found, according to Silliman, a nearly com- 

 plete dorsal vertebra of a mastodon. The dorsal process was 

 17 inches long, the centra 5*5 inches in diameter and nearly 3 

 inches in thickness, while the neural canal was 3*5 by 2*75 

 inches in height and breadth respectively. The bone had a 

 dark chocolate color and was " not mineralized in the least." 

 It was taken out of innd or clay 3 feet beneath the surface. 

 Associated with the bone were freshwater shells "of the 

 genera Planorbis, Lymnaea, Cyclas, etc., similar to those 

 occupying the waters of the vicinity."* 



Doctor Walter L. Barrows, of Trinity College, directs atten- 

 tion, in a letter to the writer, to the "Connecticut Courant" for 

 Jnne 2, 1834, in which there is a statement that Silliman 

 exhibited this bone at a lecture given at Hartford May 27, 

 1831. From this account is taken the following : " From the 

 perfect condition of the bone thus accidentally discovered, there 

 is reason to believe that a complete skeleton may be recovered 

 in the morass where the specimen in question was found." 

 This bone was presented to Yale College by Elijah H. Burritt, 

 but is evidently no longer in existence. 



(4) A second mastodon was discovered in New Britain in 

 September, 1852, and the bones were for many years on exhi- 

 bition there at the State Normal School. What became of these 

 bones after 1885 is not known. The present information is 

 taken from an account by Hon. David N. Camp,f entitled 

 " Mastodons roamed Connecticut once." While excavating in 

 a soft swampy soil for a pond on land belonging to Mr. Wil- 

 liam A. Churchill, the workmen came across a considerable 

 portion of a mastodon skeleton, " the thigh bone, humerus, 

 tibia, several of the ribs, and two or three teeth. Some of the 

 bones, on being exposed to the air, crumbled." This locality 

 is now in the city of New Britain back of the Young Women's 

 Christian Association, or near the junction of School and 

 College streets. 



(5) Professor Edward Hitchcock got in 1871 a mastodon 

 molar that was taken "out of a muck bed on the farm of Elias 

 Bardwell " in the town of Colerain, which is near the north 

 line of Massachusetts. This was then the first known occur- 

 rence of mastodon in that state.;}: 



The Farmington or Pope mastodon. — Late in August, 1913, 

 Italian workmen, while digging a trench to drain a small up- 

 land swamp on the beautiful estate of the late A. A. Pope, near 



* This Journal, xxvii, 165, 1835. Here the locality is given as Berlin, but 

 D. N. Camp, in the article cited, gives it as above described. 



f Hartford Times of January 3, 1914. The first statement regarding the 

 1852 specimen appeared in the same, paper, on September 21 of that year. 



X This Journal, (3), iii, 146, 1872. 



