344 BITEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 52 



the well, "probably" from between a layer of tosca and the un- 

 derljdng sand. The skull was said to have been found by a work- 

 man, who passed it to the foreman, who in turn gave it to Mr. Junor. 

 The workman can not now be identified. It does not appear that he 

 ever was questioned as to how the bone was found. Mr. Junor remem- 

 bered that several skulls were found and that the workmen played 

 hocJias wdth them. In this game balls are tossed or rolled along the 

 ground, and the skuUs were thus broken up until only the fragment 

 that is known as Diprothomo remained. But this recollection was 

 afterward corrected by Mr. Junor to the original statement that the 

 fragment alone was found. 



On one point Mr. Junor was positive: The fragment of skull was 

 taken out of the well. And although this statement rests on the 

 say-so of the foreman who was told so by a workman, it appears to 

 be the one item in the early history of the find that is not open to 

 serious doubt. How, then, did the hard smooth skull-cap get into the 

 well? Was it originally embedded in the Pampean terrane or did 

 it happen to fall into the hole from some previous resting place ? 



The writer had understood that the dry dock was built out in the 

 Rio de la Plata and had assumed that the space was inclosed by a 

 caisson, an engineering device for excluding the water, which would 

 necessarily keep out also any bones that might be buried in the river 

 mud. When questioned on this point, Mr. Junor agreed that a 

 caisson must have been necessary, but he could not clearly remember 

 the structure. Subsequent inquiry at the office of C. II. Walker & 

 Co., the contractors who buUt the dry dock, developed the fact that 

 there was no caisson. The dry dock was excavated in the flat, which 

 was awash with the water surface. The river was easily excluded 

 by. an embankment and the great excavation was kept dry by pump- 

 ing from a sump or well at the lowest point. When the dock had 

 been dug out a concrete floor was laid, then concrete walls were built, 

 and when they were completed, the well for the rudder-pit was finally 

 cleaned out and walled up. It was in digging the well that the 

 Diprothomo was found. How it got there can not be positively ascer- 

 tained, but two possibiUties present themselves, namely, that it came 

 there accidentally either before or after the dock excavation was 

 made. During all the work up to the finishing of the walls the 

 Pampean earth and river mud had stood exposed. Any objects con- 

 tained in the material excavated or in the standing earth exposed at 

 the side might have found their way into the close vicinity of the 

 rudder-pit, if not into the pit itself. Three photographs which show 

 the conditions were chosen from a number courteously shown us by 

 Mr. E. M. Simpson, manager for the contractors; these are repro- 

 duced in plates 47 and 48. The first shows the finished excavation 

 with walls of earth all about, a floor of earth and down the center a 



