NEW YORK.
(Map [28].)
1. Clyde, Wayne County.—A skull of the giant beaver was found, about the year 1846, near Clyde, on the farm of Gen. W. H. Adams. The locality and the geological conditions were described by James Hall (Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. II, 1846, p. 167; Boston Jour. Nat. Hist., vol. V, p. 385). The region is on the divide between the streams flowing north into Lake Erie and those flowing southward into Clyde River. The actual spot was at the head of a shallow stream which flows into Lake Ontario. At this point the Sodus Canal was cut and ran in a north-and-south direction. The farm was only partly swampy. Hall’s section is as follows from above downward:
1. Vegetable soil, 2 feet or more. 2. Fine sand, with some alternating layers of clay, containing twigs, leaves, etc., 2 to 3 feet. 3. Muck, or peaty soil, with decayed wood, bark, leaves, and even trunks of large trees, about 4 feet. 4. Fine sand, with fresh-water shells, 2 to 3 feet. 5. Drift, with boulders; depth unknown.
The skull was found at the bottom of No. 3, at a depth of 8 feet. It is evident that this animal lived here near, or after, the close of the Wisconsin stage, and after the old Lake Iroquois had withdrawn from the region.
2. Canastota, Madison County.—In 1914, Dr. Burnett Smith, of Syracuse University, reported (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XXXVIII, p. 463) the discovery, at this place, of an incisor tooth of the giant beaver. The exact locality is given as about 225 paces northwest from the southeast line of lot 10, town of Lenox, on Cowaselon Creek, otherwise known as the “State ditch.” The tooth was found at a depth of 9 feet, in a sticky blue clay, containing a few fresh-water shells. Just above this, at a depth of 7 feet, is a layer made up principally of shells, with some vegetable matter. This animal could not have lived here until after the withdrawal of Lake Iroquois, and therefore not till near the close of the Wisconsin stage.