PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCHES. 87 



" Kespecting the fossil remains of the human body I possess from Florida, I can 

 only state that the identity with human bones is beyond all question; the parts 

 preserved being the jaws with perfect teeth, and portions of a foot. They were 

 discovered by my friend, Count P. D. Portales, in a bluff upon the shores of Lake 

 Munroe, in Florida. The mass in which they were found, is a conglomerate of 

 rotten coral-reef limestone and shells, mostly Ampullarias of the same species now 

 found in St. John River, which drains Lake Monroe. The question of their age is 

 more difficult to answer. To understand it fully, it must be remembered that the 

 whole peninsula of Florida has been formed by the successive growth of coral reefs, 

 added concentrically from north to south to those first formed, and the accumula- 

 tion between them of decomposed corals and fragments of shells; the corals prevail- 

 ing in some parts, as in the everglades, and in others the shells, as about St. 

 Augustine and Cape Sable. Upon this marine limestone formation, and its ine- 

 qualities, fresh-water lakes have been collected, inhabited by animals, the species 

 of which are now still in existence, as are, also, along the shores, the marine 

 animals, remains of which may be found in the coral formation. To this lacustrine 

 formation belongs the conglomerate containing the human bones mentioned above; 

 and it is more than I can do to establish, with precision, the date of its deposition. 

 This, however, is certain, that Upper Florida, as far south as the head-waters of the 

 St. John, constituted already a prominent peninsula before Lake Okeechobee was 

 formed ; and that the whole of the southern extremity of Florida extends for more 

 than three degrees of latitude south of the fresh-water system of the northern part 

 of the peninsula. 



" If we assume that rate of growth to be one foot in a century, from a depth of 

 seventy-five feet, and that every successive reef has added ten miles of extent to 

 the peninsula (which assumption is doubling the rate of increase furnished by the 

 evidence we now have of the additions forming upon the reef and keys south of 

 the main land), it would require 135,000 years to form the southern half of the 

 peninsula. 



" Now, assuming further, which would be granting by far too much, that the 

 surface of the northern half of the peninsula, already formed, continued for nine 

 tenths of that time a desert waste, upon which the fresh waters began to accumu- 

 late before the fossiliferous conglomerate could be formed (though we have no right 

 to assume that it stood so for any great length of time), there would still remain 

 10,000 years during which, it should be admitted, that the mainland was inhabited 

 by man and the land and fresh-water animals, vestiges of which have been buried 

 in the deposits formed by the fresh waters covering parts of its surface. So much 

 for the probable age of our conglomerate." 1 



Dr. Usher says the phenomena of geology "establish not only that South 

 America was inhabited by an ancient people long before the discovery of the new 

 continent, or that the population of this part of the world must have preceded all 

 historical notice of their existence — they demonstrate that aboriginal man in 



1 For a general account of bones of man among organic remains, see Smith's Nat. Hist, of the Human 

 Species, pp. 93-110. 



