45. Fowlerville, Livingston County.—Dr. John M. Clarke (Bull. 69, etc., p. 932) stated, on the authority of Mr. H. J. Peck, that 3 or 4 teeth, tusks, and other bones, badly broken, had been found, in 1886, in an excavation on the bank of Genesee River, 80 feet above the water. No further information has been recorded.
From Dr. I. Edward Line, Rochester, N. Y., the writer has received a photograph of an upper right penultimate molar, little worn, which he reports as having been found in 1887, near Genesee River, on the road from Avon to Fowlerville. It was discovered in a marshy part of the farm of Robert Boyd and was exhumed by the late Dr. William Nishet, of Avon. Other teeth, a tusk, and fragments of bone were found, some of which, Dr. Line states, were taken to Harvard University by Professor F. W. Putnam. Quite certainly this was the same mastodon as that reported by Mr. Peck. The animal could not have lived here until after a stage represented by Fairchild’s plate 37 (Bull. 127, New York State Mus.).
46. Geneseo, Livingston County.—In 1827 (Amer. Jour. Sci., vol. XII, p. 380), Jeremiah Van Rensselaer reported that, in 1826, the skull, tusks, lower jaws with teeth, pelvis, and many other bones had been found at Geneseo. Later (1841) Lyell and James Hall made excavations at the same place, but discovered only some fragments of the skull and of other bones. These were at a depth of about 5 feet and were mixed with marl and yet existing fresh-water shells. Over all was a layer of muck (Lyell, “Travels in North America,” vol. I, p. 55). Hall (Geol. 4th Dist., p. 363, fig. 173) published a figure of one of the teeth, a hindermost molar. The remark as to the geological age of the Fowlerville specimen applies to this one.
47. Nunda, Livingston County.—Clarke (Bull. 69, p. 932) stated, on the authority of Charles E. Beecher, that 10 bones and fragments of a mastodon had been secured here, and presented to Yale University collection. No exact locality and no geological information were furnished. The geological age is quite certainly late Wisconsin or still later.
48. Belvidere, Allegany County.—In the American Geologist, vol. XXXIII, 1904, page 60, an anonymous note states that some mastodon remains, 3 ribs and 4 vertebræ, had been unearthed at this place by James Johnson, of Bradford, and Alban Stewart, of the Smithsonian Institution. Nothing was said as to the exact locality and geological conditions. The time of the animal’s life could hardly have been earlier than the last half of the Wisconsin stage.
49. Pike, Wyoming County.—In 1876 (Guide to Genesee Valley Mus., Letchworth Park, Castile, N. Y., 1907, pp. 5–6), a part of a skull, the tusks, a few vertebræ, and some foot-bones were found on the farm of Charles Dennis, on the outskirts of the village of Pike. They were met with in making a ditch and hence were probably in a marsh. Their geological age is that of the last half of the Wisconsin stage or later.
50. Attica, Wyoming County.—In 1887 (6th Ann. Rep. State Geologist, for 1886, p. 34), J. M. Clarke described briefly the finding of supposed mastodon bones at this place. A tusk had been encountered while a trench for a water-main was being dug on Genesee street. In 1888 (41st Ann. Rep. State Mus., for 1887, pp. 388–390, plate), Clarke reported the results of further digging. The tusk was exhumed, as well as two ribs and a fragment of the zygomatic arch. Nothing was found that distinguished the remains from those of an elephant. The fragments were in a bog-hole and scattered over a space about 20 by 25 feet. Under the made ground was first a layer of loam 5 inches thick, then came in succession 1 foot 2 inches of clayey muck and 1 foot 5 inches of unlaminated clay and an undetermined thickness of laminated clay. The bones lay in the unlaminated clay, at a depth of 2 feet 6 inches from the natural surface. With the bones was what was thought to be an ankle-bone of an elk. At a distance of 75 feet was another bog-hole, 75 feet in diameter, which was filled with muck lying on compact laminated clay. The muck had a maximum thickness of 4 feet. At the deepest place was found a piece of pottery and, beneath and around it, about 30 fragments of thoroughly burned charcoal.
The proboscidean remains here described must have been buried after (how long after one can not say) the Wisconsin glacier had retired about two-thirds the way from its southward limit to the shore of Lake Ontario.
51. Leroy, Genesee County.—J. E. De Kay, in 1842 (Zool. N. Y., Mamm., p. 104), stated that in 1841 a mastodon tooth weighing 2 pounds had been found in a bed of marl 3 miles south of Leroy. No other information appears to have been recorded.
The mastodons found here and at Stafford and Batavia could have lived only after the ice-sheet had retired beyond these places. About this time the waters of the Finger Lake region found an outlet westward to the Mississippi by way of lakes Warren and Chicago.