FOWKE] ELEPHANT BED 485 
at various places; in talus, in the banks of the creek and of tributary 
ravines, in the earth around saline springs. They were most abun- 
dant along the foot of a cliff which projected from the foot of a 
hill in an angle or sharp curve, facing the west. A bone found 
among these last bore so close a resemblance to a human fibula that 
extended and close comparison was required to establish its identity. 
While this matter was still in doubt a further examination of the 
locality was made to gain, if possible, additional mformation. 
It may be stated here that the bone in question, after careful 
study by anatomists, proved not to be that of a human; and it may 
also be said that nothing whatever was found, or has ever since 
been found, at this site or anywhere else in the region, which tends 
to show that man existed here as a contemporary of the mastodon. 
It may be well, however. to preserve a record of the work done 
here. 
A trench was started at the bottom of the hill, which was 60 feet 
from the bottom of the bluff. After passing down through soil 
and detritus a mass of soft black substance was encountered, which 
resembled macerated charcoal or the dead leaves and trash that 
have been buried beneath soft mud until completely carbonized. 
Under this lay what seemed to be a rocky beach which had long 
been subjected to wave action, the surface being smooth and the 
broken rock cemented by infiltrating lime into a breccia. Where 
this was first uncovered it had a thickness of about 5 feet above 
bedrock; it was not penetrated elsewhere. All the material lying 
above it was removed. Its upward slope was somewhat less than 
that of the overlying talus, so that at 40 feet from the beginning 
the trench was 12 feet deep. It so happened that the excavation 
coincided with the crest of a spur extending from the high cliff, 
the rock forming its bottom sloping to the northward and the 
southward as well as toward the creek. The north side, so far as 
exposed, was practically the same from top to bottom, a reddish, 
clayey earth, filled with angular fragments of limestone that had 
broken away from the cliff. It contained no rounded gravel, though 
patches of this lay on the conglomerate within the trench, while 
at the bottom of the south wall it was from a foot to 2 feet thick. 
At a distance of 40 feet from the beginning of the trench a 
vertical wall of solid rock 2 to 3 feet high was reached. It was 
either an old shore line or due to a break or slip in the strata. 
Both the breccia and the black deposit overlying it came to a stop 
against this rock face, the black being as thick here as at any 
other place where it occurred, but not extending beyond this point. 
Between the two, against the rock wall, was a narrow strip about 
3 inches thick of loose, uncemented chert fragments, most of them 
