466 AURIFEROUS GRAVEL MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 



The Di"o-cr skull, like the Calavera.s. has a large and hiohly developed 

 exterior angular process. In the Digger skull also the volume of the 

 frontal region is large, and in the noDiia verticalls the zygoma are 

 nearly concealed. In another respect also the two crania are alike, the 

 nasaf crests in the Digger skull having the same rounded and sloping 

 surface which is one of the points emphasized by Dr. Wyman and 

 whioii tlm engraving brings out so well. In regard to the orbital open- 

 ings, Avhile measurements are not at hand for the Calaveras skull, there 

 is a general similarity between the two, and in both crania there is a 

 broad infraorl)ital space. 



"While the comparison of an actual skull with the drawings of a 

 fragment of another must })e unsatisfactory, yet the conclusion is nec- 

 essary that the two skulls have the same general features and may 

 easily be pronounced of one and the same tvpe." 



Professor Whitney lays nuich stress upon the fact that the specimen 

 is undoubtedly a fossil. 



"Chemical analysis proves that it was not taken from the surface, 

 but that it was dug up somewhere, from some place where it had been 

 long deposited, and whei'e it had undergone those chemical changes 

 which, so far as known, do not take place in objects buried near the 

 surface. " 



If there was a trick on the part of fun-loving miners, "they must 

 themselves,'' he adds, "have obtained from somewhere the o])iect thus 

 used; and as all the diggings in the vicinity are in gravels intercalated 

 between volcanic strata, it becomes, reallj^ a matter of but little con- 

 sequence, from a geological point of view, from whose shaft the skull 

 was taken.'-' It would appear that Whitney failed to notice that, 

 although the gravels were originally wholly intercalated with strata 

 of volcanic materials, they have been exposed in many places by the 

 erosion of valleys, that they outcrop on the hillsides and lie uncovered 

 in the valleys, and that any of the modern tribes may have buried 

 their dead in previousl}' undisturl)ed Tertiary river gravels. I learned 

 of more than one case of this kind; and when so buried, there is no 

 reason wh}' the osseous remains, especialh' if deeply covered by over- 

 deposits of shifting materials, should not have assumed in a compara- 

 tively short period of time exactly the conditions characterizing a 

 fossil. Such comparatively recent burials in exposed ver}^ ancient 

 river gravels may readih^ have taken place within less than a hundred 

 j'^ards of the Mattison mine, in fact in the actual beds exposed in the 

 mine (Fig. 5,) since these outcrop in the slopes of Bald mountain. 



The term "fossil" really signifies little in this connection, although 

 assumed b}- some to signif}^ much. No one would venture to assert 

 that a skull might not lose iiearly all its organic matter, and that a 

 large portion of the phosphate of lime might not be replaced by the 



^Auriferous Gravels, p. 271. 



