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.