326 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



EVIDENCES OF THE ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



In a memoir published in the proceedings of the Royal Society, England, 

 for 1857, Mr. Horner gives a detailed account of a series of researches re- 

 cently undertaken near Cairo, in Egypt, with a A r iew of throwing light upon 

 the geological history of the alluvial deposits of the Nile. The researches 

 were made by sinking shafts in rows from the foot of the Lybian rocks 

 across to the banks of the Nile, around the lonely obelisk of Heliopolis, and 

 alongside of the equally solitary statue of Rameses II. ; and they have re- 

 vealed the following facts : 



That the alluvium consists of desert sand and river mud, alternately, all 

 the way down, the bottom layer of mud being exactly like the top; that 

 no extinct organic forms are present in it, but only microscopic infusorial 

 shells, and recent land-shells and bones of domestic animals; that no rock 

 was touched by any of the shafts, the deepest of which was sixty feet; and 

 that fragments of burnt brick and pottery were interspersed throughout the 

 whole deposit. Mr. Horner states that he has in his possession a fragment 

 of pottery, an inch square and a quarter of an inch in thickness, the two sur- 

 faces being of a brick-red color, which had been obtained from the lowest 

 part of a boring, near the statue of Rameses II., and thirty-nine feet below 

 the surface of the ground. Now the statue of Rameses II. has been deter- 

 mined by Lepsius to date between 1394 and 1328 B. C. Yet its foundation 

 rests on a bed of sand but twelve feet beneath the surface, while the borer 

 brought up a fragment of pottery from a mud layer twenty-seven feet fur- 

 ther down. The French engineers of the last century decided the rate of 

 vertical increase of the delta to be five inches in a century. The researches 

 at Heliopolis give 3'18 inches to a century. But the statue of Rameses fixes 

 it within a small fraction of 3? inches to a century. Allowing this last esti- 

 mate to be correct, the fragment found at the depth of thirty-nine feet is a 

 record of the existence of man 13,375 years before A. D. 18-38 11,517 years 

 before the Christian era and 7,t'>25 years from the beginning assigned 

 by Lepsius to the reign of Menes, the founder of Memphis of man, more- 

 over, in a state of civilization, so far, at least, as to be able to fashion clay 

 into vessels, and to know how to harden it by the action of strong heat. 



FOSSILS OF NEBRASKA. 



Messrs. Meek and Hayden have recently published, in the proceedings of 

 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, a complete catalogue of all 

 the remains of invertebrata hitherto described and identified from the inter- 

 esting Cretaceous and Tertiary formations, generally known as the Bad 

 Lands of Nebraska. 



; In glancing over this catalogue (we quote from the authors), the palaeon- 



tologist will not fail to be struck with the great preponderance of Lamelli- 

 branchiata, Gasteropoda, and Cephalopoda over all the other invertebrate forms 

 of life. Among all the collections we have yet seen from this region, the 

 Bryozoa are represented by but one rare species of ReticuUpora, and the Bra- 

 chiopoda by only one species of Caprindla and one of Lingula, both so rare 

 that but a single specimen of each has been found ; while of the whole great 

 class of JEchinode-rnwtfi; which existed in such vast numbers, and presented 

 such an infinite variety of beautiful forms, during these epochs in some parts 



