Under this number may be recorded the discovery of mastodon teeth in a well sunk at Mount Washington, about 8 miles east of the central part of Cincinnati (Fuller and Clapp, Water-Supply Paper 259, 1912, p. 27). The teeth were found in coarse gravel, which lies only 15 feet from the surface, and is overlain by old till and loess. The indications are that the age of the mastodon is early Pleistocene.
In Area of Wisconsin Drift.
4. Amanda, Butler County.—In the collection of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences the writer has seen 2 teeth of a mastodon, probably of the same individual, which are labeled as having been found on Dick’s Creek, Butler County. This creek is in Lemon Township, and flowing westward, empties into the Miami near Amanda. The teeth are credited to W. S. Vaux. No details regarding the circumstances of discovery are recorded. The locality is south of the Germantown moraine.
5. Germantown, Montgomery County.—In 1875 (Cin. Quart. Jour. Sci., vol. II, p. 154), Mr. J. H. Klippart reported that some years before that time an account had been published in the Dayton Journal of the finding of teeth, tusks, and some other parts of the skeleton of a mastodon near Germantown. It is not known whether any competent person identified these remains, nor what has become of them.
In 1870 (Amer. Jour. Sci., ser. 2, vol. L, pp. 54–57), Edward Orton described a geological section which was exposed along Twin Creek, a mile east of Germantown. Here were found precipitous walls of clay and gravel from 50 to 100 feet in thickness and extending 0.25 mile in each direction from a point. Beneath this was a bed of peat along 40 rods of the east bank of the creek, varying from 12 to 20 feet in thickness. In the peat-bed were found mosses, grasses, sedges, and wood and berries of red cedar. Orton reported that in 1870 there were taken from this bed two mastodon tusks each 8 feet in length; also a tooth which afterwards was shown to belong to Castoroides. Whether or not these tusks were those mentioned by Klippart is uncertain.
This section is discussed by Leverett (Monogr. U. S. Geol. Surv., XLI, p. 363, plate XIV) and by G. F. Wright (“Ice age in North America,” 5th ed., p. 592, fig. 151). The latter regards the peat-bed as having come into existence during a temporary recession of the Wisconsin ice and as having been covered up during another advance of it. Leverett thinks that there is good reason to believe that the peat-bed indicates a considerable interval of deglaciation, but that it remains to be determined whether this preceded the formation of the early Wisconsin moraine or succeeded it. Considering the great thickness of the overlying Wisconsin drift and the almost certainty that Illinoian drift underlies the Wisconsin, it seems probable that this peat-bed belongs to an interglacial deposit, probably the Sangamon.
6. Dayton, Montgomery County.—In 1820 (Amer. Jour. Sci., ser. I, vol. II, p. 245), Caleb Atwater wrote that teeth of the mastodon had been found at Dayton. No details were given and the case is not illuminating. The weights given for some of the teeth make it doubtful whether or not he distinguished mastodon teeth from those of elephants.
About the first of April 1921, Mr. C. E. Pickering, of Lake View, Ohio, sent to the Smithsonian Institution for identification a well-preserved upper right second molar of a mastodon. This had been found 4 miles east of Dayton in an excavation, 30 feet below the surface. The tooth is 130 mm. long and 95 mm. wide. The surfaces of the cones are furnished with welt-like ridges which descend from the summit to the bases.
This whole region is occupied by Wisconsin drift. It is probable that the tooth was found in some river deposit, not in the drift itself.
7. New Paris, Preble County.—Professor Joseph Moore (Proc. Ind. Acad. Sci. for 1886, p. 277) reported that many bones of a mastodon had been discovered by a farmer living 2 or 3 miles from New Paris. Two grinding teeth and one tusk nearly 11 feet long were part of the remains. The bones became the property of Earlham College. Nothing was said regarding the circumstances of the discovery, but the bones were probably found in one of the marshes so common in that region. New Paris itself appears to be situated on the Germantown moraine.