156 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vil^ 



this are irregular beds of earth and clay of different colors ; next 

 is a deposit of white sea-sand 500 feet thick, which contains, at 

 irregular intervals, pebble beds from one to four feet thick:, 

 next is a bed of shell limestone at least 100 feet thick. These 

 shells are of the brackish water variety. Tchinatheff, in his 

 ^' Asia Minor," calls this Miocene. The fossils and flints were 

 closely examined, and the investigators arrived at the conclusion 

 that they were shaped by the action of water. Teeth of the 

 mastodon and parts of tusks were found. The bones found 

 were in so small fragments that it was not possible to determine 

 them. Similar fragments of flint, exhibiting no other action than 

 that of water, were found in abundance in the pebble formation 

 near Dardanelles, and it was only a question of selecting from 

 piles of stones those that happened to take a certain shape. 



Mr. Calvert has in his collection several bones split length- 

 wise, with the marrow aone. This cannot be denied. But it is to be 

 doubted if such bones proved the existence of human beings. 

 They found in the hole of a jackal, on the plain of Troy, sheep' 

 bones which had also been split lengthwise, and they inferred 

 that if the bones were split they were the work of beasts. But. 

 it is very doubtful if the bones found were broken in this way ; 

 for they found that when one of the whole bones was dropped 

 it broke lengthwise, and as all the marrow was gone, it resembled. 

 the split bones. 



The bone with the supposed engraving is a fragment about 

 eight inches in diameter, shaped like a flattened sphere, one sur- 

 face smooth, the other rough. It has been called the bone of a, 

 Mastodon or of a Dinotherium, but is so small that it cannot be 

 determined. Mr. Calvert has had it about 20 years, but only 

 lately, since he read Sir John Lubbock's book on bones in France, 

 has he distinguished the engraving upon it. The smooth sur- 

 face has some 50 marks, more than half which are grouped in 

 the centre. Taken individually, they are peculiar and puzzling, 

 but taken together, they can hardly represent a sketch of an 

 animal, or show an evidence of design. They were unable to 

 account in a satisfactory manner for the marks, but suggested' 

 they might have been produced by worms when the bone was 

 soft. They found the smooth upper surface of the underlying 

 stratum of limestone was covered with exactly similar marks, 

 m my groups of which made more striking pictures than those- 

 found on the bone. One specimen is so marked that a vivid^ 



