Mamrnut Americanum in Connecticut. 323 



Farming-ton, reported to the superintendent, Mr. Allen B. 

 Cook, the finding in the bog of a "black devil." Mr. Cook, a 

 graduate of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, soon saw 

 the significance of the find and reported the matter to Mrs. 

 Pope, who was much interested in the remarkable discovery 

 and through Attorney Charles T. Brooks brought the informa- 

 tion to the writer. The trench at the time of the latter's visit 

 revealed a number of large bones of one of the fore limbs and 

 the back part of the skull, which had unfortunately been greatly 

 damaged before the Italians became aware that they were 

 removing bone and not a prostrate tree. 



The exhumation of the skeleton was undertaken by Mr. 

 Hugh Gibb, assisted by three other preparators from Pea- 

 body Museum at Yale, and by five Italians. So careful were 

 these "bone diggers" that all the clay immediately around 

 the skeleton was dug out with their hands, as they felt their 

 way through the sticky clay down to and around the bones. 

 The greater part of the skeleton was taken out in two weeks' 

 time. Subsequently it was decided to enlarge the shallow hole 

 and to make of it a water reservoir for the estate, and during 

 this excavation the workmen late in November came upon one 

 of the great tusks, lying alone, 23 feet away from the skull, and 

 in perfect preservation. 



The skeleton of the Farmington mastodon consists of all of 

 the essential parts, minus most of the small bones of the feet, 

 a few of the smaller leg bones, most of the caudal vertebrae, 

 and one of the tusks. The greater part of the animal lay 

 together with the bones more or less jumbled, but in the main 

 there was still considerable natural skeletal alignment, — 

 the head at one end and the pelvis less than 10 feet away. 

 Scattered about and often many feet away from the central 

 mass lay single bones of the feet, tail, vertebrae, ribs, and one 

 scapula. The recovered tusk lay farthest away and on a level 

 about 2 feet higher than the main mass of bones, which were 

 in the lowest part of the swamp. Fig. 1, drawn to scale by 

 Professor Lull, shows the general disposition of the bones of 

 the mastodon as they were found. 



Geologic position of the farming ton mastodon. — The Farm- 

 ington skeleton lay in a shallow trough directly on bowlder- 

 clay, a thin covering of ground moraine that originally mantled 

 the adjacent hills and valleys alike and was deposited by con- 

 tinental glaciers during Wisconsin time. (See contour map, 

 fig. 2.) The bowlder-clay is light blue in color and consists of 

 a decidedly sandy fine mud, with some coarse sand, an abun- 

 dance of muscovite, and many striated bowlders, large and 

 small, mainly of trap with some quartzite and crystalline rocks. 

 That the till was largely derived from the adjacent Triassic 



