16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 33 



IV. THE QUEBEC SKELETON 



According to Doctor Usher a fossil human skeleton, &quot; which was 

 dug out of the solid schist-rock on Avhich the citadel stands,&quot; was 

 preserved in the museum at Quebec. There are no particulars in 

 print concerning the find ; the skeleton is not preserved in the Laval 

 University Museum, the only museum in the city containing objects 

 of natural history, and nothing could be learned concerning it 

 during the writer s recent visit to Quebec. The absurdity of the 

 statement that a human skeleton was &quot; dug out of the solid schist- 

 rock &quot; will be apparent when it is remembered that the rock is 

 Silurian. 



V. THE NATCHEZ PELVIC BONE 



In 184(&amp;gt; Dr. M. W. Dickeson exhibited at the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences at Philadelphia a collection of fossil bones obtained by him 

 in the vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi, among which was a piece of a 

 human pelvis. An account of this specimen, which appeared in the 

 Proceedings of the Academy in 1S46 (page 107), reads as follows: 



This ancient relic of our species is that of a young man of about 16 years 

 of age, as determined by its size and form, and by the fact that the epiphyses 

 have separated from the tuberosity of the ischium and from the crista of the 

 ilium. Nearly all the os pubis is wanting, the upper posterior part of the 

 ilium is broken away, and but half the acetabulum remains. That this bone 

 is strictly in the fossil state is manifest from its physical characters, in which 

 it accords in every respect of color, density, etc., with those of the Megalonyx 

 and other associated bones. That it could not have drifted into the position 

 in which it was found is manifest from several facts : 1. That the plateau of 

 blue clay & is not appreciably acted on by those causes that produce ravines in 

 the superincumbent diluvial ; 2. That the human bone was found at least 2 feet 

 below three associated skeletons c-f the Megalonyx, all of which, judging from 

 the apposition or proximity of their several parts, had been quietly deposited in 

 this locality, independently of any active current or other displacing power; 

 and lastly, because there was no admixture of diluvial drift with the blue clay, 

 wMch latter retains its homogeneous character equally in the higher part that 

 furnished the extinct quadrupeds, and its lower part that contained the remains 

 of man. 



The find obtained a wide publicity and received the particular 

 attention of Sir Charles Lyell on the occasion of his visit to this 

 country in 1846. Lyell examined the locality and in his report c 

 thereon took a rather skeptical view as to the antiquity of the 



a W. Usher, Geology and Paleontology in Connection with Human Origins, chap, xi, in 

 Nott and Gliddon s Types of Mankind. 



b The stratum that contained this and the megalonyx bones &quot; is a tenacious blue clay 

 that underlies the diluvial drift of Natchez, and which diluvial deposit abounds in bones 

 and teeth of the Mastodon yiyantcum &quot; (p. 106). 



c Second Visit to America, n, 191 et seq., 1846. 



