Hamilton. — On a Discovery of Iloa-hones. 315 



foreman showed me the place where the hones had been found 

 most plentifully. A slight examination showed that there 

 were plenty more bones to be got. I decided on excavating 

 for them. 



The spot where the bones were found is just at the very 

 mouth of the drain, where it empties itself into a very deep 

 pool, of which the rock-barrier forms the further side. The 

 section exposed in the cutting of the drain is about 15ft. deep, 

 and is 8ft. or 10ft. of silt-deposit (pumice and washing from the 

 cretaceous rocks of the district) ; then a forest-bed, consisting 

 of trunks of trees and roots matted together — about 4ft.; from 

 that downwards a stiff blue clay. It is in the lowest part of 

 the forest-bed and in the stiff blue clay that the bones were 

 found. 



The line of the drain has passed over a spring round which 

 the blue clay is so soft that it was impossible to stand very 

 near to it. 



I had two of the men who were working at the drain to 

 help me, and we got quite interested in the work, as we found 

 that in the clay under our feet at the bottom of the drain 

 there were hundreds of bones. Having to work up to our 

 middle in clay and water was certainly somewhat awkward ; 

 but, as every now and then an exceptionally fine bone w^as 

 fished up, the discomfort was forgotten. The floor of the 

 di-ain was not more than 10ft. wide, and, as the area over which 

 we found the bones did not extend more than 15ft. up the 

 drain, the number of bones recovered is certainly remarkable. 



The appliances we had did not permit of as careful an 

 examination as I could have wished, as many of the valuable 

 small bones were undoubtedly lost and thrown down the talus 

 slope into the deep pool, where there are undoubtedly many 

 more, as we found out by accident. One of the shovels having 

 slipped into the pool, we raked about for it as far down as we 

 could put a long-handled rake, and at the first haul, instead of 

 the shovel, up came a splendid tibia 32in. long. I hope to 

 dredge this hole some day, and by washing the results through 

 a screen shall probably get many of the smaller bones which I 

 still require to complete the skeleton I am now restoring from 

 the bones obtained. 



It was from the first apparent that (as in the case of the 

 Glenmark and Hamilton finds) no perfect skeletons would be 

 met with, and I could observe very little sequence or order in 

 the manner in w^hich the bones were found deposited, the 

 only point of interest being that most of the larger leg-bones 

 were found in a vertical position, the tibia and metatarsus 

 often in their relative positions. A sequence of eleven vertebrce 

 of a large species was found in one part of the bank ; but 

 generally speaking the bones, great and small, were locked 



