CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 491 



They appeared to be mostly the work of nature adopted with but 

 little change, if any, by man for his own uses. However, on this 

 point the different members of the party failed to agree. 



What this race cooked, baked, or burned in them yet remains to be 

 seen. From the quantity of the deposit, and as no human remains 

 have been found, nor any semblance of graves, it may be that their 

 method of disposing of the dead was by cremation. 



Now, who and what were these people ? The modern Indians 

 know nothing of them, never inhabit caves, and say that none of their 

 traditions show that their ancestors ever lived in them. 



They could not have been a race of giants, for the caves inhabited 

 by them were too small for their accommodation. Yet here was a 

 colony living at an altitude of eight thousand feet above the level of 

 the present sea, the nearest water at this time being the river two and 

 a half miles away, and to reach it an abrupt descent must be made of 

 several hundred feet. Appearances and surroundings indicate that 

 these caves were inhabited during the period when the San Luis 

 Valley was an immense lake or sea ; and when that valley was a lake 

 where was the rest of America ? The valley is seven thousand feet 

 above the ocean, and a natural inference would prompt one to con- 

 clude that most of the continent was under water. 



I will here state that though interested in the subject, I am not 

 enough versed in it to venture my opinions before those who have 

 made it a life-long study, but would ask, If the cave-dwellers were 

 among the earliest developments of man, and these Colorado men were 

 cave-dwellers at the period of general moisture, with a tropical climate 

 preceding them, is it reasonable to suppose that they could reach this 

 point from Asia ? 



It is easy to follow these people from their traces as they improved 

 in knowledge with time. They passed southward, apparently follow- 

 ing the warm climate, stopping for ages at a time in some now sterile 

 valley, which when occupied by them must have been rich and fer- 

 tile ; their gradually improving architecture extending down the La 

 Plata, Mancos, San Juan, and Colorado Rivers, through Arizona, and, as 

 I before said, culminating in the comparatively modern buildings of 

 the highly intelligent Aztecs. 



CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 



By Dr. BENJAMIN W. EICHAEDSON, F. E. S. 



I. 



IT fell to my lot to be the first in this country to investigate the 

 action of hydrate of chloral after the remarkable discovery of its 

 properties as a narcotic by the distinguished and original Liebreich. 

 At the meeting of the British Association, held at Exeter in the year 



