-HRDLICKA] SKELETAL REMAINS 19 
Professor Leidy gave the accompanying illustration (figure 2) of 
the pelvic bone in question. It is seen to be a defective right os 
innominatum, which, on comparison with a similar recent Indian 
bone, shows nothing peculiar. This is really all that can be said 
regarding it, and it would be quite useless to speculate as to its 
antiquity. Had the geological evidence been conclusive in referring 
the find to the Champlain or another late geological period, the soma- 
tological features of the bone would not form an insuperable objec- 
tion to this disposition of it. 
VI—THE LAKE MONROE (FLORIDA) BONES 
In W. Usher’s chapter on Geology and Paleontology in connection 
with human origins, in Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind,’ we 
find an account by Professor Agassiz of fossilized and supposedly 
ancient human “jaws with perfect teeth and portions of a foot,” 
discovered apparently about 1852 or 1853 by Count F. de Pourtales 
“in a bluff upon the shores of Lake Monroe,” Florida. “The mass in 
which they were found is a conglomerate of rotten coral-reef lime- 
stone and shells, mostly ampularias of the same species now found in 
the St. John River, which drains Lake Monroe.” The deposit is of 
lacustrine origin and contains remains of animal forms that are still 
in existence. Its age Agassiz could not give with precision; it was 
considered certain by him, however, that “the whole of the southern 
extremity of Florida, with the Everglades, has been added to that 
part of the continent since the basin has been in existence, in which 
the conglomerate with human bones has been accumulating.” Cal- 
culations based on the growth of the peninsula and its duration in 
a desert state left Professor Agassiz still “ten thousand years, dur- 
ing which it should be admitted that the mainland was inhabited 
by man.” 
The foregoing, unfortunately, seems to be the only account of the 
specimen. It is mentioned by Lyell? without any further particu- 
lars. It is not stated at what depth the human bones were discoy- 
ered or in-what association. There is, finally, nothing known as to 
the physical characteristics of the specimens beyond the fact that 
“the teeth were perfect,” and nothing as to their fate. On the 
whole, the claim to antiquity of this particular find is not a strong 
one. Fossilization itself means in Florida but little, as the process 
is even now going on in many portions of the peninsula. There is but 
one possible conclusion regarding the Lake Monroe bones, which is 
that they can not, on the existing evidence, be accepted as proofs of 
the presence of early man on this continent. 
or 
» 
@Bxcerpts here given are from 10th ed., 352-353, 1871. 
>The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, 3d ed., 44-45, London, 18638. 
