AURIFEKOUS GRAVEL MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 461 



feet, the industrious miner struc-k some old wood. Here in neighborly 

 pose the remains of vegetable and animal [human] life were found. 

 They were found embedded in gravel and a kind of cement, which he 

 thought was wood also. Taking the round or glolxilar, dirt-covered 

 bundle home, he said nothing about it to his family, but kept it in his 

 house a year or more. Here I showed Matson and his wife the figure 

 or cut copied from Professor Whitney's book. * * * Mrs. Mat- 

 son at once recognized the picture as representing the specimen in 

 question.^ It was said the cemented gravel so adhered to it as to fill 

 out the back head and make it look a natural occipital portion." 



Dr. Hudson left Calaveras County "perplexed and discouraged." 

 The stories told him seemed "incomplete and incoherent," "But," 

 he continues — 



" Some two weeks later Mr. Scribner called at our office in Stockton 

 with the welcome errand of a refreshed memory, and with additional 

 facts fitting into the l^ody of the narrative, making it more consistent. 

 * * * It seems, as time went on, Mrs. Matson, an orderly house- 

 keeper, began to take a dislike to that untidy thing — an uliwashed 

 dead head in her house — and made complaint. It was more in the 

 wav than of use or ornament, and she decided to get rid of it. There- 

 upon her husband, like a proper acquiescing partner in life, carried it 

 to Mr. Scribner's store, where at the same time the Wells-Fargo 

 Company had its business office. Mr. J. C. Scribner and his partner, 

 Mr. Henry Matthews, now became the uninvited custodians of the 

 topmost part of an aged and unknown man, * * * This man 

 Matthews had a common failing among people — he was fond of li(|uor — 

 and sometimes indulged his taste to excess. Some few daj's, or maybe 

 weeks, prior to the advent of the skull at Scribner's, ^Matthews, not 

 feeling'well, paid a visit to Dr. Jones, a worthy physician at ^Niurphys, 

 consulted him in regard to his health, and obtained from the Doctor a 

 prescription and medicine. The medicine proved rather strong; it 

 depleted the patient rapidly and produced unlooked-for d iscomf ort. As 

 he grew weaker and impatient under the continued action of th(> purge, 

 it made Matthews swear; he swore at the unholy medicine and at the 

 d — d outcast of a doctor who gave it. The natural result was, he 

 became cross toward Dr. Jones. Not to lose sight of the skull, we 

 note that as soon as Mr. Scribner saw the dirty, rotted remains of 

 old mortality before him, so soon he decided it was out of his line, 

 and he did not want the ofl'ensive thing about. But Matthews took to 

 it instinctively and at once. He thought that it, with some half-rotted 

 and half-petrified pieces of wood and a' few lumps of native ore might 

 do to embt>llish Dr. Jones's cabinet of geological and natural history 

 curiosities. Therefore they, the uneasy head and the rest, Avere 

 immediately dumped into an empty potato sack and sent to Dr. 

 Jones at Murphy's, On the same day it came, without note, com- 

 ment, or message, and Esculapius opened the sack and took out its 

 contents one by one. After a short inspection of the specimens of 



^ A comparison of the skull as it originally appeared and as seen l\v ^Mrs. Mattison, 

 and the skull as cleaned up by AVyman and illustrated by AVhitney will be instriu-tive 

 in this connection. See PI. XV; also Auriferous gravels, p. 2(58, 



