200 HUMAN FOSSIL OF NATCHEZ. CHAP. XI. 



assembled naturalists at Le Puy, that the skull of the " fossil 

 man of Dcnise," although contemporary with the mammoth, 

 and coeval -with the last eruptions of the Le Puy volcanoes, 

 should be of the ordinarj- Caucasian or European tj'jDC; but 

 the observations of Professor Huxley on the Engis skull, cited 

 in the fifth chapter, showing the near aj)proach of that ancient 

 cranium to the European standard, will help to remove this 

 source of perplexity. 



Humayi Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi. 



I have already alluded to Dr. Dowler's attempt to calcu- 

 late, in years, the antiquity of the human skeleton said to 

 have been buried under four cypress forests in the delta of 

 the ]\Iississippi, near Xew Orleans (see page 43). In that 

 case no remains of extinct animals were found associated 

 with those of man: but in another part of the basin of the 

 Mississippi, a human bone, accompanied by bones of the mas- 

 todon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed out 

 of a more ancient alluvial dei)Osit. 



After visiting the sjjot, in 1846, I described the geological 

 position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with 



Fig. 26. 



1 Modern alluvium of the Mississippi. 2 Loam or loess. 



3, / Eocene. 4 Cretaceous. 



a stronger bias, I must confess, as to the antecedent improba- 

 bility of the contemporaneous entombment of man and the 

 mastodon than any geologist would now be justified in enter- 

 taining. 



In the latitude of Yicksburg, 32° 50' N., the broad, flat, 

 : alluvial plain of the Mississippi, a b, fig. 26, is bounded on 



