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consequent upon the wet season of 1879, an apparent log was 
reached at a depth of fourteen inches, which proving too hard for 
a dull axe, was dug out, and found to be the leg bone of an animal. 
This induced the farmer to search for other bones, and after a 
few days, more than one-third of the skeleton had been exhumed, 
including the head. Three weeks after I visited and examined 
the place and bones, at the request of Major T. B. Brooks, of 
Newburg. The swamp is bordered on the side nearest the posi- 
tion of the skeleton by a low hill of "boulder clay," a hard, blue 
clay mixed with gravel, which slopes down and passes under the 
peat or " muck " of the swamp, and forms the original bottom of 
the pond. 
The skeleton was found with the head farthest from the margin, 
ana deeply imbedded ; while the right limbs were near the sur- 
face (the right humerus only fourteen inches deep), proving the 
animal to have been mired, and to have fallen on its left side. 
Where the head was found, twenty feet from where the clay rises 
tc the surface, the peaty material was ten feet deep above the 
clay, and where the humerus was first struck the depth was less 
than three feet. Owing to this fact, these bones, which were so 
near the surface, are less perfectly preserved. 
Skeletons of Mastodon, like those of other fossil animals, are 
seldom found entire, more or less of their parts having decayed ; 
consequently the missing parts have to be replaced, either by the 
substitution of the missing bones from other individuals of cor- 
responding size, or by artificial models. The skeleton in question 
is probably the most perfect of the mounted skeletons now known, 
except the famous Warren Mastodon, found near Newburg in 
1S45, and now in the Warren Collection at Boston, Mass., of 
which the tusks, all but one of the sternal (breast) bones, many 
of the bones of the feet and the caudal bones, are artificial. 
In the present skeleton the tusks are replaced by a pair from 
Hoopeston, 111., belonging to the same individual as the separate 
lower jaw, with tusks ; the pelvic bones and three of the ribs are 
also substituted. These parts had probably decayed from their 
nearness to the surface, or were plowed up in cultivating the 
ground. The terminal bones of the feet, four of those of the 
neck, three of the back, and all but the upper six of the tail, are 
