438 TROPICAL NATURE 



Man Coeval with Extinct Mammalia 



We next come to remains of man or his works found in 

 association with the bones of extinct mammalia. The great 

 mastodon skeleton in the British Museum found by Dr. Koch 

 in the Osage valley, Missouri, had stone arrow-heads and 

 charcoal found near it, but the fact was at the time received 

 with the same incredulity as all other evidences of the anti- 

 quity of man. This animal was found at a depth of twenty 

 feet, under seven alternate layers of loam, gravel, clay, and 

 peat, with a forest of old trees on the surface, and one of the 

 arrow-heads lay under the thigh-bone of the mastodon and 

 in contact with it. About the same date (1859) Dr. Holmes 

 communicated to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural 

 Sciences his discovery of fragments of pottery in connection 

 with bones of the mastodon and megatherium on the Ashley 

 river of South Carolina. 



Such cases as these remove all improbability from the 

 celebrated Natchez man, a portion of a human pelvis from 

 the loess of the Mississippi, which contains bones of the 

 mastodon, megalonyx, horse, bison, and other extinct animals. 

 This bone was stated by Sir Charles Lyell " to be quite in 

 the same state of preservation and of the same black colour 

 as the other fossils." Dr. Joseph Leidy agrees with this 

 statement, yet he and Professor C. G. Forshey maintain that 

 it is "more probable" that the human bone fell down the 

 cliff from some Indian grave near the surface. Sir Charles 

 Lyell well remarks that " had the bone belonged to any other 

 recent mammal, such a theory would never have been resorted 

 to." The admitted identity of the state of preservation and 

 appearance of the human and animal bones is certainly not 

 consistent with the view that the one is recent, the other 

 ancient ; the one artificially buried near the surface, the other 

 in a natural deposit thirty feet below the surface. 



Of a similar character to the above is the basket-work mat 

 found in a rock-salt deposit fifteen to twenty feet below the 

 surface in Petit Anse island, Louisiana, two feet above which 

 were fragments of tusks and bones of an elephant. The salt 

 is said to be very pure, extending over an area of 5000 acres, 

 and the formation of such a deposit requires a considerable 



