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GEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
difference of result; and this variety will be rendered yet greater by the mixture of earths, 
stones, and other mineral substances, which the winds and torrents have carried among it. 
“ From all these particulars it will be apparent, that both turf and peat, when pure, ought 
to be considered merely as a residuum of decayed vegetables ; that the minerals frequently 
found in it are foreign and casual admixtures, by no means essential to its nature, and that it 
ought not to be considered as a mineral production, nor classed as such in the systems ; but 
that the clay, marl, pyrites, and other fossil bodies found among it, should be referred to their 
proper places in the inineralogical arrangement. 
“ On this subject there appears a propriety in suggesting a few practical hints. As wood 
grows scarce, and our State is not known to abound in coal, the sphagnum might be cultivated 
for fuel in wet grounds and swamps that now lie waste, and perhaps will never be cultivated. 
If this should ever be attended to as an economical matter, the cultivator should not suffer 
cattle to tread it, nor foreign plants to overgrow it, nor water to be drained from it; but clear 
the swamp of the peat as soon as it has risen above the moistening influence of the springs, 
and be ever careful to remove the upper paring, containing the living plants, to some wet and 
suitable spot for propagation. 
“ But though the sphagnum has so much agency in filling up wet and low places, it is by 
no means the only plant which acts in that way. There are many other small and obscure 
vegetables, which, by their numbers, add considerably to the bulk of matter accumulated in 
these spots. Many of the grasses taking root, and increasing upon such bottoms, form, in 
process of time, bogs, hassocks, or a sort of sward, which contribute no less to the diversity 
than to the increase of these swampy productions. When shrubs and trees of various kinds, 
as well as annual plants, gain an establishment in these soils, the qualities and appearance of 
the latter undergo additional variation.”* 
Mastodon. 
Bones of the mastodon were found in 1790 - 91 and 1800, in the town of Montgomery, 
about twelve miles from Newburgh in Orange county. They were ten feet below the surface, 
in a peat bog in marl. Several bones of the legs, some of the vertebrae, several ribs, and 
some of the bones of the head, were obtained. One of the leg bones “ measures more than 
forty inches around the joint, and thirty-six on the cylindrical part of the bone, and is nearly 
five feet long. The teeth are nearly seven inches long, and four broad; they are found white, 
and fast in the jaw, without appearance of decay. The holes in the skull, where appears to 
have been the nostrils, measure eight inches in diameter. The orifice occasioned by the de¬ 
cay of the marrow, in the back bones, three and a half inches in diameter.” “ Eight similar 
skeletons have been discovered within eight or ten miles of the neighboring country, and some 
of them were fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the earth.”t All these specimens were 
Medical Repository, Vol. 1, pp. 431, 435. 
t S. Miller. Medical Repository, N. Y. 1801, Vol. 4, p. 212. 
