CHAP. xr. AGE OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 203 



was obtained by Dr. Dickeson of Natchez, in whose collection 

 I saw it. It appeared to be quite in the same state of pre 

 servation, and was of the same black colour as the other 

 fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth 

 of about thirty feet from the surface. In my ( Second Visit 

 to America,' in 1846,* I suggested, as a possible explanation 

 of this association of a human bone with remains of a mastodon 

 and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been 

 derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas 

 the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower 

 position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus 

 at the bottom of the ravine. The pelvic bone might, I con 

 ceived, have acquired its black colour by having lain for 

 years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil, common 

 in that region. I was informed that there were many human 

 bones, in old Indian graves in the same district, stained of as 

 black a die. On suggesting this hypothesis to Colonel Wiley, 

 of Natchez, I found that the same idea had already occurred 

 to his mind. No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any 

 recent mammifer other than man, such a theory would never 

 have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one 

 isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who 

 was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, 

 and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend 

 our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil. 



If, however, I am asked whether I consider the Natchez 

 loam, with land-shells and the bones of mastodon and 

 megalonyx, to be more ancient than the alluvium of the 

 Somme containing flint implements and the remains of the 

 mammoth and hyaena, I must declare that I do not. Both 

 in Europe and America the land and freshwater shells accom 

 panying the extinct pachyderms are of living species, and I 

 could detect no shell in the Natchez loam so foreign to the 



* Vol. ii. p. 197. 



