MAN S EXISTENCE ON THE GLOBE. 



333 



bedded in this calcareous matrix, is in the British Museum ; another (fig. 

 239) is in the Museum of Paris. In both, the skull is wanting. 



These fossil skeletons of Guadaloupe, as Cuvier observes, all more or 

 less mutilated, are found near Porte de Moule, on the north-west coast of 

 the, mainland of Guadaloupe, in a kind of slope, resting against the 

 steep edges of the island. This slope is, in a great measure, covered by 

 the sea at high water, and is found to be nothing else than a tufa, formed, 

 and daily augmented, by the very small debris of shells and corals, which 

 the waves are perpetually detaching from the rocks, the accumulated mass 

 of which assumes a great degree of cohesion in the places that are most 

 239 frequently left dry. It is found, on ex- 



amining them with a lens, that several of 

 these fragments have the same red tint as 

 a part of the corals contained in the reefs 

 of the island. Formations of this kind 

 are common in the whole archipelago of 

 the Antilles, where they are known to 

 Negroes under the name of Ma^onne-bon- 

 dieu. Their augmentation is proportioned 

 to the violence of the surge ; and they have 

 greatly extended the plain of Cayes, in 

 St. Domingo, in which sometimes are 

 found fragments of earthen vessels, and of 

 other articles of human fabrication, at a 

 depth of twenty feet. Various conjectures 

 have been made, and even events have been 

 imagined, in order to account for the depo- 

 sition of these skeletons of Guadaloupe. 

 But, from all the circumstances of the 

 case, M. Jonnes, correspondent of the 

 Academy of Sciences, who has been on 

 the spot, and to whom Cuvier is indebted for numerous details, thinks, that 

 they are merely bodies of persons who have perished from shipwreck. 

 Their discovery occurred in 1805. In the rock, which inurns these 

 bones, M. Koenig detected fragments of Millepora miniacea, of several 

 Madrepores, as well as the fragments of shells, which he compares to 

 Helix acuta, and Turbo pica ; and Cuvier states that, in the specimen at 

 Paris, which was sent there by General Donzelot, there are embedded 

 shells of the neighbouring sea, and land shells, which are still found alive 

 in the island ; namely, the Bulimus Guadaloupensis of Ferussac. Sir 

 Humphry Davy subjected small portions of the skeleton in the British 

 Museum to chemical analysis, and found that the bones contained part 

 of their animal matter, and all their phosphate of lime. 



Skeleton from Guadaloupe. 



