CHAP. XI. AGE OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 203 



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

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

 servation and was of the same black color as the other 

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

 of about thirty feet from the suz'face. 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 color 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 dye. 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 ai-e 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 mega- 

 lonyx, to be more ancient than the alluvium of the Somme 

 containing flint implements and the remains of the mam- 

 moth and hyena, I must declare that I do not. Both in 

 Europe and America the land and fresh-water 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. 



