ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA. 287 



Brown have found remains of no less than ten cypress forests 

 at different levels below the present surface. These trees are 

 not unfrequently as much as ten feet in diameter, and there 

 are from 95 to 120 rings in an inch. The human skeleton 

 above referred to was found at a depth of sixteen feet, and 

 beneath the roots of a cypress-tree belonging to the fourth 

 forest level below the surface.* Dr. Andrews, indeed, in 

 a letter cited by Mr. Southall,-f- questions this calculation. 

 He maintains that the accretion of river mud in the region 

 of the lower Mississippi is very rapid, and points out as a 

 proof of this that trunks of trees may be seen standing in 

 the banks of the river, showing that the accretion must have 

 been rapid enough to cover them before they had had time to 

 decay. Whether, however, we accept Dr. Douler's calculation 

 or not, it is obvious that, if the statements are trustworthy, 

 this skeleton certainly must carry back the existence of man 

 in America to a very early period. 



In another case a piece of a wicker basket is said to have 

 been found in Louisiana,! in association with elephants' re- 

 mains. Lastly, implements curiously resembling the Palaeo- 

 lithic implements of Western Europe, have been found by 

 Mr. Jones at a depth of nine feet in the gravel of the Chatta- 

 hoochee valley, and by Mr. Abbott in the drift gravels of 

 New Jersey.|| 



On the whole, then, the evidence certainly seems to indi- 

 cate that Man has inhabited America for a considerable period, 

 and it is even probable, though there may not as yet be any 

 absolute proof, that he co-existed there with the mammoth 

 and mastodon. 



* Dr. Usher, in Nott and Glid- Jones, Ant. of the Southern 



don's Types of Mankind, p. 338. Indians, p. 294. 



t Recent Origin of Man, p. 472. || Rep. of the Peabody Museum, 



J Desnoyers, Cong. Int. d'An- 1878. 

 thropologie, p. 98. 



