28. Freehold, Greene County.—Clarke (op. cit., p. 927) stated that there is in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, an atlas of a mastodon which was found at Freehold.
29. Greeneville, Greene County.—In 1843 (Geol. 4th Dist., p. 367), James Hall stated that he had visited this locality, where mastodon bones had been found embedded in a fresh-water marl. Lyell (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. XII, 1843, p. 127) visited the locality with Hall and stated that the mastodon bones occurred in swamps at a depth of 4 or 5 feet.
In 1843, Mather (Geol. 1st Dist., p. 44) wrote that bones supposed to belong to an elephant had been found at this place. It is doubtful whether the remains reported by Mather and Hall are those of an elephant or of a mastodon.
30. Coeymans, Albany County.—Mather (Geol. 4th Dist., 1843, p. 44) recorded the finding of mastodon remains on Helderberg Mountain, on the farm of a Mr. Shear, 4 or 5 miles west of Hudson River, in the township of Coeymans. The remains were discovered in a bed of shell-marl, in the bank of a marsh. A tusk was taken to Albany. It was supposed that most of the skeleton was left in the ground.
31. Cohoes, Albany County.—In the collection of the State Museum, at Albany, there is a mounted skeleton of a mastodon discovered in 1866. It was first announced by Robert Safely (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLII, 1866, p. 426) and soon afterward noticed by Marsh (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XLIII, 1866, p. 115). It formed the subject of an essay by James Hall (21st Ann. Rep. New York State Cabinet, 1871, pp. 98–148, plates III-VII) and was further mentioned by Clarke in 1903 (op. cit., pp. 929–930). Portions of it were found in two large pot-holes on the shore of Mohawk River. For the facts, and for Hall’s and Clarke’s conclusions, the reader must consult the publications cited. G. K. Gilbert (21st Ann. Rep. State Cabinet, 1871, pp. 129–148) discussed the geological conditions at Cohoes. He concluded (p. [140]) that the pot-holes were not made during a glacial period, but were of preglacial age. Dr. H. L. Fairchild, who has studied the history of the Mohawk Valley more thoroughly than anyone else, has expressed in a letter to the present writer the opinion that the pot-holes are post-glacial formations. The matter is further discussed on page [297]. Inasmuch as the glacial ice was not far away, it appears to the present writer that the geological stage may better be regarded as Late Wisconsin.
Professor Fairchild’s plate 16 of Bulletin No. 160 of the State Museum of New York gives the position of the Wisconsin ice-sheet in New York at the time that it had just withdrawn from the region about Cohoes. His plate 17 presents a later stage, when the upper part of the Hudson Valley was occupied by Lake Albany.
Unfortunately, no evidences of other animal life, excepting the beaver, were found with the mastodon at Cohoes. Marsh, in his notice of the discovery, gave a list of the trees recognized in the pot-holes. There were white pine, hemlock, black spruce, larch, swamp maple, and white birch.
In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, there is a lower jaw of a mastodon with second and third true molars, right and left, which is said to have come from Cohoes.
32. Copenhagen, Lewis County.—In 1884 (Trans. Linn. Soc. N. Y., p. 47), Dr. C. Hart Merriam stated that there had been found in 1877, in a marl bed about a mile west of Copenhagen, a tusk measuring 5 feet 9 inches in length. It was purchased for the State Cabinet. It could not be determined whether this had belonged to an elephant or a mastodon.
33. Center Lisle, Broome County.—In the Watkins Glen-Catatonk folio No. 169 of the U. S. Geological Survey, on page [28], Dr. Ralph S. Tarr stated that remains of a mastodon had been found a few hundred yards north of this town, in a boggy place where a spring emerges from the base of a gravel terrace. He did not tell what parts had been found. He remarked that one could not be certain whether the bones had been washed out of the gravel or had come from an animal which had mired there. In geological age it must be referred to the last half of the Wisconsin stage.