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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



beyond the railroad right of way. In digging over Mrs Pea- 

 cock's lot for the purpose of constructing a fish pond, bones 

 were found lying on a pavement of heavy stones and just below 

 a thin layer of muck. At the time of my visit on July 4 there 

 had been taken from this excavation, one tusk, a number of 

 ribs and vertebrae, part of the scapula, pelvis and sacrum. The 

 ground had then been well dug over, and the prospect of finding 

 other bones did not seem altogether favorable, nor had enough 

 been secured to make the acquisition of them particularly de- 

 sirable. It is quite probable however that more of the bones 

 of this skeleton might be found by judicious excavation of the 

 low land on the opposite side of the highway. 



Our attention is so often directed to the finding of mastodon 

 bones in this State that I have undertaken to bring together 

 in another part of this report, simply as a matter of record, 

 a list of such discoveries made, so far as records show, within 

 the boundaries of the State. This list may be imperfect, but 

 it is a significant one. There appear on it entries of about. 60 

 different finds of this kind; and, while the most complete of the 

 skeletons have been found in the swamps of Orange county, 

 the record shows that the remains have been also pretty freely 

 distributed throughout the western part of the State. I have 

 pointed out there that these occurrences for the most part indi- 

 cate that mastodons roamed the territory of New York prob- 

 ably in such abundance as the buffalo roamed the western 

 plains 40 years ago. It is not a matter of wonder that few 

 complete skeletons are found, as these remains are located 

 mostly close to the surface, and such parts as were left exposed 

 to the action of the air have naturally crumbled, while still 

 other parts may have been destroyed by rodents or through 

 other organic agencies. And it is also noted that the location 

 of these bodies, not far from the surface and, in the vast ma- 

 jority of cases, on swamps deposited on relatively recent river 

 terraces or lake beaches, goes to indicate, that the interval of 

 time separating the present from the day of the mastodon is 

 not great; that these animals pertain to a late stage in post- 

 glacial history and were doubtless contemporaneous with man, as 

 is specially indicated by the Attica mastodon excavated by the 

 WTiter in 1887. 



