1895.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 445 



for great thick blocks of wood, still uudecomposed, cut out of trees, 

 aud though rubbed and rounded in an inexplicable manner, still 

 retaining their bark? Aware that he was probably dealing with 

 a situation such as had never before been presented in the sea- 

 board region, and not certain what might be disclosed at any moment, 

 he had taken the most minute care of all the bones that could be 

 saved, labelling everything at once, according to a system of 

 numbered rectangles painted on the deposit with white- wash so 

 that the exact relative position of each specimen could be recorded 

 and a chart made, if need be, to show the whole series in place at 

 a glance. 



Here was an immense deal of evidence sealed up, every item of 

 which should offer an important clue to the conditions of pleistocene 

 time. The matrixes sent in bulk in boxes, because they contained 

 too many small remains to be opened at the cave, should be studied 

 by a botanist. There were parts of trees, twigs, and possibly grasses, 

 leaves, vines, fibres, nuts and seeds, all as clearly a part of the 

 time and its climate as the animals. 



Several suppositions were necessary to account for what was seen: 



First. This diverse and uncongenial horde of animals must have 

 come together, whether to eat salt, feed, drink, cross a swamp and 

 perish in the mire, fall into a hole, or to take refuge at some point 

 of vantage from some terror of nature. 



Second. They perished, but how? Should the entombment be 

 referred to wholesale destruction by lightning, carcasses dragged 

 into an open cavern by carnivores, or numbers of animals going to 

 one spot to die ? If it was drowning on a large scale, how account 

 for the birds and the turtles? 



Third. The flesh decomposing had left the bones, and the bones 

 themselves had decayed in many instances before they were rede- 

 posited in the cave. This was certain from the fact that no skeletons 

 lay intact. 



Fourth. Water had redeposited the already fleshless and weakened 

 bones in their present position, grinding many of the older and 

 more fragile into a sort of meal, imbedding others comparatively 

 intact in this meal, depositing all in hopeless confusion with clay and 

 stones in stratified bands, and destroying them still farther by the 

 down-settling of the debris after they had reached their present 

 position. 



There seemed to be no mixing of epochs or down- washing of old 

 and new deposits into this deep chasm. Whatever else was inferred 

 from the debris they knew its geological date. They had gone back 

 one geological step, into different conditions of species, and a different 

 climate. If they were to find a paleolithic ape-like savage in 

 eastern North America this was the place to settle his antiquity 

 beyond all reasonable doubt. No trace of humanity had yet been 



