27. Penn Township, Jay County.—Mr. David McCaslin (12th Ann. Rep. Geol. Surv. Indiana, p. 169) stated that various remains of mastodon had been found in Jay County. He mentioned in particular fragments found in Penn Township (township 24 north, range 8 east) and which seemed to indicate the presence of an entire skeleton. It is, however, possible that this skeleton was that of an elephant. The Salamonie moraine passes diagonally through this township.
28. Fort Wayne, Allen County.—Richard Lydekker (Foss. Mamm. Brit. Mus., pt. IV, p. 17) stated that there is in the British Museum of Natural History a cast of the left half of the brain of an immature specimen of mastodon which had been found at Fort Wayne. The cast had been sent to that museum by the Chicago Academy of Science.
Professor C. R. Dryer (16th Ann. Rep. Geol. Surv. Indiana, p. 129) reported five skeletons of mastodons found in Allen County. No particulars were given. A note from Professor Dryer to the present writer states that he had been unable to obtain additional information. It is not unlikely that some of these remains belonged to elephants, but doubtless some were those of mastodons. It is to be regretted that so little of value is secured from such discoveries.
29. DeKalb County, 5 miles west of Waterloo.—In the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh there is a quite complete skeleton of a mastodon which was found in 1897, in a peat-bog about 5 miles west of Waterloo. Dr. W. J. Holland gave a brief account of this skeleton in 1905 (Ann. Carnegie Mus., vol. III, p. 464). The exact location of the place has not been ascertained by the writer. According to Leverett’s map (Monograph LIII, U. S. Geological Survey) this mastodon was buried on the eastern border of the Salamonie moraine, and it could not have lived there until well along in the latter part of the Wisconsin stage.
55. DeKalb County, 5 miles northeast of Waterloo.—Dr. W. J. Holland (Popular Science, New York, vol. XXXIII, 1899, p. 233) described the finding and disinterment of three mastodons and had a figure of one skeleton. One of the nearly complete skeletons was found resting on “hardpan,” partly embedded in a thin layer of shell marl and muck under the peat, at points not more than 3 feet below the surface.
56. Noble County.—Under this number may be mentioned the following discovery of mastodon remains: In the American Naturalist, volume II, 1868, page 56, was reported a communication made to the Chicago Academy of Science by Dr. Meyers, of Fort Wayne. He announced that he and Dr. Stimpson, of Chicago, had unearthed the skeletons of three mastodons somewhere in Noble County, in a basin-shaped depression in the middle of a corn-field, formerly a willow swamp. One of the animals was a young one. Some of the bones had been found by Mr. Thrush, in digging a ditch through his land.
The skeletons lay at a depth of 4 or 5 feet, in a stratum of peat which overlay blue clay containing lacustrine shells. In the peat were found fragments of boughs and branches of several kinds of wood in a good state of preservation, and some fragments had been gnawed by beavers.
30. Ashley, Steuben County.—The American Museum of Natural History, New York, contains the fine skull of a mastodon, found in Steuben Township not far from Ashley. The finder of the skull, Mr. Walter F. Deller, of Ashley, informed the writer that it was discovered in a swamp which was being drained, about 5 feet from the surface. He states that the bones lay in a marl, itself overlain by muck, and on top of all some soil which had been washed in. So far as can be determined, the animal was buried between the Mississinawa and the Salamonie moraines. With the skull were found other parts of the skeleton, which shows that the remains were in their original place of burial.
Mastodons Found Outside of Mississinawa Moraine and Between Wabash and Kankakee Rivers.
31. Beaver Lake, Newton County.—In 1870 (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. IV, p. 229), Frank H. Bradley reported that in draining Beaver Lake, in Newton County, mastodon remains had been found, in company with Boötherium. No details were furnished, and it is not known what was done with the specimens. It is probable that the musk-ox belonged to the species Symbos cavifrons. It occurs over the country much more abundantly than any other musk-ox.