All three of the mastodons mentioned were evidently buried in pond and swamp deposits which lie on or near the Bloomington moraine of the Wisconsin drift. They lived, therefore, after the disappearance of the last glacial ice-sheet and probably long after that disappearance.
20. Beecher, Will County.—At Hebron, Indiana, the writer has seen various bones of mastodons which had been unearthed in the region about Beecher by Mr. Jacob Davis, in dredging large ditches. He described these bones as amounting to “about two wagonloads.”
Mr. George Langford, of Joliet, Illinois, stated in a letter that it is reported that over a dozen mastodons have been found on one farm near Beecher in the last 10 years. Mr. Langford sent also a geological section (fig. 1) taken along Trim Creek. Besides the mastodon remains found there, he obtained a large part of an antler of Cervalces. The locality is given as the northwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 11, township 33 north, range 14 east, 3 miles north of east of Beecher.
This locality is on the Valparaiso moraine, the last formed before the Wisconsin ice withdrew into Lake Michigan. It was, however, probably long after this that the mastodons lived and died there.
Mr. Langford’s account seems to indicate that, after the deposition of the Valparaiso moraine and the withdrawal of the ice-sheet, there was left along what is now Trim Creek a shallow lake, which became gradually filled by washings from the moraine. This at length became a marsh and produced peat and other vegetable muck. At one stage the surface appears to have been occupied by a forest, which later became covered by about 4 feet of sandy soil. Over this is 2 feet of black peat, itself overlain by probably Recent deposits.
Fig. 1.—Geological section of Trim Creek. Beecher, Will County, Illinois.
1. Moraine. 2. Wisconsin drift. 3. Alluvium. 4. Black peat. 5. Sandy soil, with bones. 6. Peat, sand, vegetable matter. 7. Same stained brown; with gravel.
Mr. Langford has written that all the mastodon bones were found above the gravel, some of them 5 or 6 feet below the surface. Antlers of the elk occurred only above the mastodon bones.
21. Morris, Grundy County.—In 1870, Frank H. Bradley (Geol. Surv. Illinois, vol. IV, p. 193) stated that in 1868 the remains of a mastodon were found at Turner’s “strippings,” about 3 miles east of Morris. These bones lay under 18 inches of black mucky soil and about 4 feet of yellowish loam, and rested on about a foot of hard blue clay, which itself covered the coal. The bones were mostly badly decayed and the greater part were broken and thrown away by the miners; but some, including a part of a lower jaw and 3 teeth, were sent to the State Cabinet at Springfield. The locality was regarded by Bradley as part of an old river bottom.