47o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nearly upon the floor of the tunnel. The other skeleton was evidently 

 complete, or nearly so, and but little disturbed. It was found about 

 ten feet further away from the entrance, lying upon the limestone 

 talus, though wholly covered by the silty material characteristic of the 

 tunnel throughout. This skeleton is that of an adult between forty and 

 fifty years of age, about five feet two inches in height, of slight build 

 and, in much probability, of a female. The bones were firm, and as 

 fully fossilized as could be expected in such material as enclosed them. 

 The bones show in places an incrustation of a stony matrix commonly 

 observed about bones of pleistocene animals preserved in river deposits 

 in the west. I may also add that some of the bones of the leg show 

 pathological deposits, probably rheumatoid. The young man who ex- 

 humed the skeleton stated that it was irregularly placed. As the 

 specimen came under my observation it was largely enclosed in its 

 original matrix. Very clearly it had not been covered by the lime- 

 stone talus upon the floor of the cave. Portions of the encrusting 

 matrix enabled one to determine that the bones had been in large part, 

 if not wholly, articulated when discovered. Every collector of verte- 

 brate fossils knows how rarely so large a skeleton as that of a man is 

 found preserved entire and with the bones in position. The right 

 femur was lying in its socket, but reversed; the left femur had been 

 partly dislocated from its acetabulum, and was lying obliquely across 

 the pelvis. Various other bones showed connections, and some of the 

 bones of the feet are still united. Altogether, sufficient fragments 

 were recovered to show that nearly every bone in the skeleton had been 

 present. The femur measures a little more than seventeen inches in 

 length (430 mm.), the tibia fourteen inches (350 mm.), the humerus 

 twelve inches (302 mm.), the radius ten inches (250 mm.), and the 

 forearm, from olecranon to wrist, eleven inches (277 mm.). 



It seems very probable that the skeleton had been immersed in water 

 while yet held together by the flesh. It is impossible that it could have 

 been subjected to strong currents of water after the decomposition of 

 the ligaments had occurred, nor could it have been exposed to the 

 atmosphere for any length of time, nor even for a short time to the 

 depredations of predatory animals while yet enclosed in the flesh. In 

 other words, it seems almost beyond dispute that the person had either 

 been thrown into the water very soon after death, or had been drowned, 

 and that the body had remained immersed in comparatively quiet water 

 until covered so deeply by the soil that it could no longer suffer the 

 vicissitudes of exposure to the atmosphere and predatory animals. 

 Evidences of artificial or accidental burial beneath the silt are wanting 

 and are improbable. So far as any theory of the age of the skeleton 

 is contradictory to this evidence it may be rejected. 



Two chief views as to the age of the remains are now held : the one 

 by Professors Winchell and Upham ; the other by Professor Cham- 



