202 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the skulls -were exhibited on the table. Mr. Laing said that the skulls 

 of the chieftains presented little difference from those of ancient 

 British skulls, but the others appeared to be of a lower type, and to 

 resemble, in some particulars, the skulls of negroes. Among the 

 shells and bones found in the middens, there were two human jaw- 

 bones, one of which was the jaw-bone of a child about five years old, 

 which bore the marks of having been gnawed, indicating that the 

 child had been eaten. 



Prof. Owen said the skulls differed in several essential particulars 

 from the form of the Ethiopian skull ; one of them might be mistaken, 

 from part of its configuration, for that of a negro, but the small size 

 of the molar teeth, the angle at which the nasal bones joined each 

 other, and the extent to which the parietal and alisphenoid joined, 

 showed that it was of a different type. With respect to the jaw-bone 

 of the child, he observed that he was well acquainted with the marks 

 made by savages on the jaws of animals they devoured as food, and he 

 feared the evidence which the child's jaw afforded tended to prove 

 that our progenitors who inhabited Scotland at a remote period must 

 have been cannibals. The dental cavity is filled with nerve pulp, 

 which savages relish, and the child's jaw-bone indicated that it had 

 been broken to extract that substance. 



The Chronology of the last Geological Epoch. The Swiss natur- 

 alists, geologists, and antiquarians have recently endeavored to make 

 some calculations respecting the chronology of the periods of the last 

 geological epoch, of which various dates have been obtained. M. Gillie- 

 son of Neuveville (on the Lake of Bienne), has communicated to the 

 Helvetic Society for Natural Philosophy at Lausanne, his geologico- 

 archaeological researches on the marshy region situated between the 

 lakes of Neuchatel and Bienne, and made; a chronological computation, 

 giving to the ancient pilework or lake-dwelling near Pont-de-Thielle, 

 an antiquity of about G7i centuries, the establishment belonging ac- 

 cording to its remains of animals and to its other relics, to the oldest 

 settlements of the stone-age known in Switzerland. 



All round the lake of Geneva there is to be seen a threefold system 

 of diluvial cones or deltas, the edges of which, turned towards the 

 lake, constitute a threefold series of steps or terraces, at regular 

 hights of about 50, 100, and 150 feet above the present level of the 

 lake. When circumstances have been favorable for their preservation, 

 we find all the three diluvial cones situated behind and above the 

 other, at the mouth of the same watercourse which formed them suc- 

 cessively, when the lake stood first about 150, then about 100, and 

 lastly about '>'.) feet above its modern level. Now these diluvial cones, 

 says M. Morlot, are posterior to the last glacial period, for they are 

 formed, in great part, of reworked erratic matter, and they show on 

 their surface no trace of erratic deposit, whilst they can frequently be 

 seen distinctly overlying the glacial formation. It is the gravel-beds 

 of those post-glacial cones which have disclosed, near Merges on the 

 lake of Geneva, teeth of the ti/rji/iax prim i genius. 



From an examination of the.se and other evidences, M. Morlot 

 shows that the succession of events in the recent geological epoch has 

 been substantially as follows : first, a glacial period; then a first dilu- 

 vial period, without great glaciers; then a second glacial period, of 



