44 
GEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
Logs and trees are frequently exposed in the bed of Kinderhook creek, where it wears 
away its banks or shifts its channel. Dr. Pru 5 m related several examples where these things 
had thus been exposed, after having long been buried in the alluvion, that had come under his 
personal observation. Similar observations have been made by residents on the banks of the 
Schoharie kill, of the Batten kill near Cambridge, the Hoosick, and various other streams. 
Trees, logs, timbers, planks, and various products of nature and of art of the present day, 
are continually being enveloped and buried under the alluvial depositions along the valleys of 
streams, in marshes, lakes, ponds, and on the coast; and all future change tending to remove 
these deposits, will expose some of the buried objects, as the removing agencies now expose 
the deposits of preceding times. 
Bones of Animals in Alluvial Depositions. 
The bones of the Mastodon, and of the Fossil Elephant, are frequently found in the peat bogs 
of Orange county. Many parts of skeletons have been obtained from thence ; and multitudes 
of individuals of these animals are undoubtedly entombed in the marshes of that and perhaps 
other counties. Few of their remains have been found further north. Orange county abounds 
in peat and marl marshes ; and from the position in which the bones of many of their skele¬ 
tons have been found in New-York, Ohio and Kentucky, it is inferred that most of these 
animals (whose remains we find) lost their lives by being mired in the marshes and in the 
miry clay around the salt licks of southern Ohio and Kentucky. 
Some of the bones of a fossil elephant, as is supposed, were found about two miles west of 
Greenville, Greene county, about twelve miles from Coxsackie. Two of the vertebrae were 
brought to Albany. One of them, the dentatus, is still in the possession of Prof. E. Emmons. 
The articulating surface of this is nine inches in diameter. 
Another was found on the Helderberg mountain, in a bed of shell or lake marl, where it 
appeared to have been mired in this material, on the bank of a small pond-hole or marsh. 
This was found on the farm of Mr. Shear, four or five miles west of the Hudson, in the town¬ 
ship of Coeymans, Albany county. A tusk of the animal was brought to Albany. Most of 
the skeleton is supposed to be still at the locality where the tusk was found. The tusk was 
small for one of these animals. 
Mr. Peale, the naturalist, obtained most of the bones of a skeleton of a mastodon from one 
of the marshes in Orange county. In Goldsmith’s Natural History, edited by Godman, may 
be found a detailed account of the places explored, and the difficulties encountered and overcome 
in procuring them. 
Nothing is known with certainty of the habits of these animals,* farther than can be drawn 
from investigations of comparative anatomy; and no one who has examined into that subject. 
* Mr. Stickney, for many years Indian Agent for the United States for the Indians northwest of the Ohio, and who, from his 
long residence among them, became intimately acquainted with their customs, habits, manners and traditions, informed me that 
particular persons in every nation were selected as the repositories of their history and traditions; that these persons had others 
