200 BUEEAU OF AMERICAlSr ETHNOLOGY [bull. 52 



The illustration is here reproduced (fig. 44) and the notes accompa- 

 nying it are given in a slightly altered form. 



The next notices concerning the Arroyo de Frias discovery are both 

 from Ameghino and appeared in two publications in 1879.^ The 

 statements are again unsatisfactory as to essential details. In the 

 first of the publications (Compte-rendu, etc., p. 219), the note reads 

 as follows: 



[Human bones from the epoch of the fossil edentates of Argentina], 

 "although few in number, have been exhumed from the banks of 

 the small Arroyo de Frias near Mercedes, where they were interred 

 at a depth of more than 3 m. in disturbed soil mixed with the debris 

 of glyptodon."^ 



On page 226 of the same publication occurs the following: 



"Almost at the lowest part of the bed of the arroyo and in its left 

 bank I found a large quantity of fragments of the carapace of the 

 Iloplophorus; in extracting these I came to the stratum No. 7,^ in 

 which I gathered human bones mixed with those of several extinct 

 animals and with vestiges of human industry. 



"Thereupon I excavated a deep trench, which traversed all the 

 strata in their natural lay and which I carried to 1.50 m. below the 

 level of the bed of the arroyo. Down to tliis depth I continued to 

 find the following objects: Human bones, worked stones, implements, 

 fragments of burned bones, bones perforated, incised, grooved and 

 striated, baked earth, and a great quantity of charcoal." 



On page 227 Ameghino adds, after enumerating the bones of many 

 fossil animals found during the same excavation: 



' ' Some of these species were represented by entire skeletons with all 

 their bones in undisturbed relation, a condition wliich demonstrates 

 that the soil which inclosed them has not been moved and that they 

 were enveloped by the earth at the same time as were the human 

 bones and the worked objects. These last consisted of a small flint 

 arrow point, another arrow point, more crude, and two flints show- 

 ing beveling, with a perforated femur of the Eutatus, and an edged 

 lamina from the tooth of a Toxodon." 



In his article in the Revue d'Antliroiwlogie (1879)^ Amegliino adds 

 notliing concerning the Arroyo de Frias find to what is said above, 

 the two accounts being practically the same. In regard to the 

 Arroyo de Frias bones he adds that they were in the same st^ate of 



1 Ameghino, F., I^a plus haute antiquite de Thomme dans le Nouveau-Monde; in Compte-rendu de la 

 troisidme session de Congrcs International des Americanistes, Bnixelles, 1879, pp. 198-250. Also L'homme 

 prehistorique dans la Plata; in Revue d' Anthropologic, 2™" ser., n, Paris, 1879, pp. 210-249. 



2 In the same paragraph Ameghino says, "other fossil human hones have been found mixed with the 

 d6bris of Megatherium and of the Great Ursid, called A rctotherium bonaeriensis, on the borders of the river 

 Carcarana." This can refer only to the Seguin find, in which, however, the bones were those of the great 

 fossil bear and a horse, but not of the Megatherium. 



3 No. 9 of fig. 44. 



* Vol. m, Paris, 1880, pp. 1-12. 



