ee aS 
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Toon BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 33 
been made, it seems that his opinion should carry more weight than 
that of Doctor Dickeson. 
Examination and measurements of the specimen gave Schmidt 
nothing extraordinary, and racial identification of the bone was 
justly declared by him to be wholly impossible. 
The Natchez pelvic bone came eventually to the attention of Prof. 
Joseph Leidy, and he reported on it in the 7ransactions of the Wagner 
Free Institute of Science, 1889 (11, 9-10). According to this 
authority 
the collection of fossils, yet contained in the museum of the academy, are 
well preserved, firm in texture, and stained chocolate brown from ferruginous 
infiltration. The fossils consist of a nearly entire skull and other bones of — 
Megalonyx Jeffersoni, teeth of Megalonyxr dissimilis and EHreptodon priseus, 
bones of Mylodon Harlani, bones and teeth of J/astodon americanus, and teeth 
of Hquus major and of Bison latifrons. The human innominatum, somewhat | 
mutilated, presents the same condition of preservation and color as the other 
fossils with which it was found associated. . . . It differs in no respect 
from an ordinary ayer- 
age specimen of the cor- 
responding recent bone 
of man. 
Sir Charles Lyell, 
in an interview with 
Professor Leidy— 
expressed the opinion 
that, although the hu- 
man bone may have 
been contemporaneous 
with those of the ex- 
tinct animals with 
which it had been 
found, he thought it 
more probable it had 
fallen from one of the 
Indian graves and had 
become mingled with 
the older fossils which 
were dislodged from the 
deeper part of the cliff. 
At the time of 
making his communica- 
tion Doctor Dickeson 
Vie. 2.—The Natchez pelvic bone. (After Leidy.) intimated that the hu- 
man bone was found at 
a lower level, beneath bones of the Megalonyx, ete., but this would not prove its 
age to be greater than or contemporaneous with the latter. In the wear of the 
cliff the upper portion, with the Indian graves and human bones, would be 
likely to fall first and the deeper portion with the older fossils subsequently on 
the latter, 
