62 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



[BULL. 



mixed with white sand, and of sand, which is more or less replaced over 

 large areas by flat, irregular masses of fine or coarse fossil-bearing 

 conglomerate of widely differing consistency, ranging in color from 

 gray to dark brown or blackish. These masses, which in spots reach 

 20 inches and even more in thickness, rest upon the irregular surface 

 of a more clayey deposit, allied to the greenish basal layer of the 

 Osprey skull locality and less permeable by water than the sand and 

 soil above it. In this deposit were seen small waterworn pebbles, 

 but no larger rocks or consolidations. As to the conglomerate, that 

 found at the surface, which forms in places a detachable layer look 

 ing not unlike a lava flow, is finer grained, more grayish in color, and 



PIG. 10. Shore line at South Osprey. 



contains but few fossils. In places it is as hard as flint, while in 

 others, sometimes in close proximity, it lacks firmness and crumbles 

 to pieces readily, hardening somewhat, however, on exposure in dry 

 places. Below this layer, which is very variable in thickness, and 

 sometimes in places where it is absent, is found the coarser conglom 

 erate, of a darker color, in places visibly ferruginous, also differing in 

 consistency from spot to spot and containing fossil sharks teeth and 

 many water worn fossils of cetaceans. These fossils, jasper-like in 

 appearance and hardnes? and plainly not contemporaneous with the 

 rock that holds them, are being slowly washed out by the waves to lie 

 along the beach. The human skeleton was found in a grayish-black 

 portion of the upper, finer conglomerate, 



