34. Brookton, Tompkins County.—In the American Naturalist, volume V, 1871, page 314, C. Fred Hartt gave an account of the discovery of mastodon bones at Mott’s Corners, on Six-mile Creek. This is the former name of the present village of Brookton. Only 2 teeth and some fragments of bones were secured. The locality is situated in a deep valley of the creek, which had once been filled with drift, and through this the creek had cut down to solid rock. Where the bones were found was a small peat-bog consisting of a layer of peat varying from a few inches to 2 feet. This was full of sticks, pine knots, bark, etc., more or less decayed. Below this peat was a layer, a few inches thick, composed of clay mixed with pebbles and pieces of shale. In this were the teeth and decayed bones. The whole was underlain by drift materials. Tarr, as cited above, stated that mastodon remains had been found in a swamp in the valley bottom at Brookton. He did not say when the discovery was made, nor what was found. It is not unlikely that the two cases are the same.
In 1871 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. II, p. 58), Dr. Burt G. Wilder reported that 5 teeth and many fragmentary bones had been found near Ithaca, in a deposit of modified drift. The writer has been informed by Miss Pearl Sheldon, of Cornell University, that these are the same remains as those reported by Professor Hartt.
The mastodon found at Brookton could hardly have lived there before the stage when the waters that gathered at the southern edge of the retreating ice were reaching the sea by way of Mohawk and Hudson Rivers.
35. Pony Hollow, Tompkins County.—In 1915 (Science, vol. XLI, pp. 98–99), Pearl Sheldon, of the Department of Geology in Cornell University, reported that a tusk, probably of a mastodon, had been found at Pony Hollow, 12 miles southwest of Ithaca, on the farm of Bert Drake. This place, as shown on the Ithaca Quadrangle topographical sheet, is in the southwest corner of the county. As the writer is informed by Miss Sheldon, it is on Cantor Creek, near its junction with West Branch. The tusk was met with in a gravel-pit at a depth of 24 feet. The radius of curvature was between 2 and 3 feet, the circumference from 10 to 13 inches. It may have been the tusk of an elephant. The pit was in the base of an extensive terrace which follows the valley-wall high above the outwash gravel-plain occupying the floor of the valley. The reporter thought that the terrace was not later in origin than the end of the ice occupation of the valley, and might be earlier.
Miss Sheldon informed the writer that the terrace which contained the mastodon tusk is too high in the valley to have been formed by water backed up against the retreating ice-front. Furthermore, the locality is south of the divide. It was suggested that during the retreat of the ice the southward-flowing water in the Pony Hollow basin was backed up somewhat by the ice in the Seneca basin. At any rate, the terrace and the mastodon contained in it belong to the latter part of the Wisconsin ice stage.
36. Elmira, Chemung County.—Dr. John M. Clarke (60th Ann. Rep. New York State Mus., p. 59) referred to reports of the eighteenth century to the effect that tusks of proboscideans had been found in Chemung River, one of them just below Elmira. It is very probable that some or all of these had belonged to the mastodon.
Apparently all that can be said about the geological age of these proboscideans is that they lived during or after the last half of the Wisconsin drift stage.
37. Lodi, Seneca County.—In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, there are second and third upper mastodon molars, recorded as having been found at Lodi. The town is on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake. This animal belonged to the last half of the Wisconsin stage, or to a later one. Possibly it was living there at the early period when the impounded waters of the Finger Lake region were discharging through Susquehanna River.
38. Macedon, Wayne County.—Dr. J. M. Clarke, in 1903 (Bull. 69, N. Y. State Mus., p. 930) reported for Professor H. L. Fairchild, that there are in the University of Rochester a few mastodon teeth from this place. There is no information on record about the geology of the place where they were found. The animal belonged to a relatively late stage of the Pleistocene and may have lived close to the beginning of the Recent. The glacier had withdrawn near to or within the basin of Lake Ontario.
39. Seneca Castle, Ontario County.—Professor Edward Hitchcock jr., in 1885 (Science, vol. VI, p. 450), announced the discovery of what was supposed to be remains of mastodon at the bottom of a peat morass, lately drained, at the town named. This place is near Flint Creek. No teeth and no part of the skull were found. The remains were taken to Amherst College. With these bones was found also an antler of an elk. In a letter written December 21, 1918, Dr. F. B. Loomis, of Amherst, states that he regards these bones as those of an elephant.