70 Cruise of the "Alert." 



which formed its floor were a human jaw-bone and fragments 

 of smaller bones. On excavating the floor of the cave we 

 found it to consist of a stiff pasty greyish-white marlclay, 

 abounding in small shells, amongst which were species of the 

 genera Patella, Fissurella, Chiton, and Calyptrcea. On reaching 

 a depth of about one foot, we came upon a nearly complete 

 human skull of immature age, an otter skull with bones of 

 the same, and the tooth of an Echinus. The human bones 

 obtained were part of the skeletons of two individuals, one ol 

 whom must have been young, for the epithyses of the long 

 bones were not quite cemented to the shafts. I noticed that 

 the skull presented a completely ossified frontal suture, although, 

 from the nature of the teeth and alveoli, the person to whom 

 it belonged could not have lived for more than twelve years 

 or thereabouts. A tibia found in the first depot bore marks 

 of having been chopped by some sharp cutting instrument. 

 From the fact of these bones being found interbedded with 

 marine deposits, coupled with what we know of these islands 

 having been elevated within recent times — I here refer to the 

 evidence afforded by raised beaches and old highwater marks 

 in the faces of cliffs — there is reason to believe that these 

 bones were deposited in the cave at a time when it was under 

 water, that they thus became surrounded by and imbedded in 

 an ordinary marine shallow water deposit, and that eventually, on 

 the island being elevated so as to raise the cave to its present 

 position — thirty feet above sea level — the surface deposit was 

 reinforced by the percolation of lime- charged water from the 

 rock above, thus resulting in the formation of the marlclay 

 surface-layer above mentioned. 



We made different attempts at dredging, but as the bottom 

 was everywhere very rocky and the dredge in consequence con- 

 tinually getting foul, we were not successful in obtaining many 

 objects of interest. However, among them there were specimens 

 of a hydroid stony coral representing two species of the genus 



