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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 33 



been made, it seems that his opinion should carry, more weight than 

 that of Doctor Dickeson. 



Examination and measurements of the specimen gave Schmidt 

 nothing extraordinary, and racial identification of the bone was 

 justly declared by him to be wholly impossible. 



The Natchez pelvic bone came eventually to the attention of Prof. 

 Joseph Leidy, and he reported on it in the Transactions of the Wagner 

 Free Institute of Science, 1889 (n, 9-10). According to this 

 authority 



the collection of fossils, yet contained in the museum of the academy, are 

 well preserved, firm in texture, and stained chocolate brown from ferruginous 

 infiltration. The fossils consist of a nearly entire skull and other bones of 

 Megalonyx Jeffersoni, teeth of Megalonyx dissimilis and Ereptodon prisons, 

 bones of llylodon Harlanl, bones and teeth of Mastodon americanus, and teeth 

 of Equus major and of Bison latifrons. The human innominatum, somewhat 

 mutilated, presents the same condition of preservation and color as the other 

 fossils with which it was found associated. ... It differs in no respect 



from an ordinary aver 

 age specimen of the cor 

 responding recent bone 

 of man. 



Sir Charles Lyell, 

 in an interview with 

 Professor Leidy 

 expressed the opinion 

 that, although the hu 

 man bone may have 

 been contemporaneous 

 with those of the ex 

 tinct a n i m a 1 s with 

 which it ha d been 

 found, he thought it 

 more probable it had 

 fallen from one of the 

 Indian graves and had 

 become mingled with 

 the older fossils which 

 were dislodged from the 

 deeper part of the cliff. 

 ... At the time of 

 making his communica 

 tion Doctor Dickeson 

 intimated that the hu 

 man bone was found at 



a lower level, beneath bones of the Megalonyx, etc., but this would not prove its 

 age to be greater than or contemporaneous with the latter. In the wear of the 

 cliff the upper portion, with the Indian graves and human bones, would be 

 likely to fall first and the deeper portion with the older fossils subsequently on 

 the latter. 



FIG. 2. The Natchez pelvic bone. (After Leidy.) 



