AURIFEROUS GRAVEL MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 467 



carbonate in a few hundred years if the conditions were reasonably 

 favorable to the change. That such changes do not readily take i)hice 

 veiy near the surface is probably true; but we nuist not lose sight of 

 the fact that, setting aside the possibility of the accumulation of deep 

 overplaceiuents, burial in caves and pits was practiced in this section 

 and that these receptacles are sometimes of very considerable depth. 

 Bodies cast in are rapidly covered up and are subject to just such 

 conditions as those favoring fossilization. 



It should be noted that silicitication of the osseous matter of the skull 

 is not mentioned; iron and lime from surface coatings merely. Iron 

 is everywhere and its reactions are rapid; and in a region abounding 

 in limestone formations calcareous matter is freely dissolved, carried, 

 and redeposited by the waters. The conditions characterizing the 

 skull are just such as might be expected in a skull coming from one of 

 the limestone caves, crevices, or pits of the district. The thin film 

 of calcareous matter coating the skull and extending throughout the 

 porous lining makes it heavy, but does not necessarily indicate a pro- 

 longed period of inhumation. 



It would appear from statements made by Scribner (in Hudson's 

 paper, already quoted) that Whitney descended into the mine and 

 examined the gravel bed from which the skull is said to have been 

 o])tained, but in his monograph the latter states that he failed to accom- 

 plish this on account of the water in the mine. He saj's that ''the 

 excavation has remained filled with water during the whole time since 

 the skull came into my possession." (P. 271.) However, some oiie 

 must have succeeded in overcoming the difficulty, as Dr. W. H. Dall 

 states^ that while in San Francisco in 1866 he compared the material 

 attached to the skull with portions of the gravel from the mine and 

 that the}^ were alike in all essentials. But even if the material from 

 the mine is like that attached to the skull, nothing is proved, as the 

 same may well be true of materials from many parts of the Angels 

 district. The peculiar agglomeration of earth, pebbles, and bones is 

 readily explained by referring to conditions existing in the limestone 

 caverns and crevices of the region where the calcareous accretions 

 bind together bones, gravel (very generally present), cave eaith. and 

 whatever happens to be properly associated, in just such manner as 

 that illustrated in the specimen under discussion. 



Again, much stress is laid on the fact that the skull obtained by 

 Whitney "had been broken in such a manner as to indicate great 

 violence," as if su))ject to severe l)lows while swept by a torrent over 

 a bed of bowlders. Wlien it is remembered that the fractures e\hil>- 

 ited liy the skull are fresh and sharp, this highly imaginative state- 

 ment (previously quoted in full) loses its force, for the tossing in a 



^ Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Pliiladelpliia, 1899. 



