BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 33 



are wearing away very rapidly in places a score of feet since I first knew 

 the bay. Not so much in this place, but some. Tire rock in which this speci 

 men is embedded was not long ago covered by the soil and subsoil, which has 

 been washed away. Now all along the shore in places, not continuously, are 

 beds or masses of a conglomerate rock, ferruginous, varying in color from red 

 to black, and which the late Professor Meek said was bog iron ore, and con 

 taining pebbles, many of them phosphate of lime. It was in this hard rock 

 that I found and sent Professor AVilcox pieces of Indian pottery, though he 

 discovered some himself before that. These beds of conglomerate rest upon 

 sand, and so did this other kind of rock I sent you, and you will see projec 

 tions on the bottom of it where the mud of which it was made was cast into 

 holes and inequalities in the sand. This same rock, containing occasionally 

 an oyster shell, lies in places on top of the hard conglomerate, which would 

 seem to show that the skeleton was embedded subsequent to the formation of 

 the hard conglomerate, but by an agency similar or identical. 



The bones consisted of the larger part of the thorax, lying, particu 

 larly as regards the vertebrae, fairly well in situ. Two pieces of the 

 rock in which the bones were included were chiseled out and sent to 

 the Smithsonian Institution and are now preserved in the National 

 Museum. Both Mr. Webb (J. G.) and Mr. Wilcox found small 

 fragments of pottery in the rock in several places along the shore of 

 the bay adjoining Mr. Webb s property on the south; one of these 

 potsherds, apparently a piece of a simple Indian cooking pot, is also 

 preserved in the National Museum. 



EXAMINATION or THE SPECIMENS 



With the exception of a brief report on the Osprey skull and the 

 Hanson Landing calcaneum by Leidy, the western Florida fossil human 

 bones until now have not been described. In undertaking the de 

 scription of the more important of the specimens, it w r as recognized 

 that the first desideratum was a competent chemical analysis. This 

 w r as kindly made at the Museum chemical laboratory by Mr. W. C. 

 Phalen. Four different specimens w^ere analyzed at the same time 

 by exactly the same method, and the results were as follows : 



a Calculated by difference. 



b Calculated theoretically. 



