REVIEWS. 
The fill Caves of Vucatan. A Search for Evidence of Man's 
Antiquity in the Caverns of Central America, being an account 
of the Corwith Expedition of the Department of Archzol- 
ogy and Paleontology of the University of Pennsylvania. 
By Henry C. Mercer. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 
Company; 1896. 8vo., 183 pp., I map, 74 illustrations. 
In the introduction attention is called to the important results of 
cave exploration in Europe, and the slight work previously done in 
America. Brief reference is made to the author’s explorations in 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and 
Indiana, during the previous two years, and their uniform negative 
results, so far as evidence of a primitive race or great antiquity is 
concerned, although abounding in evidence of Indian occupation. 
It was hoped that the caves of Yucatan would afford decisive evidence. 
They were large and abundant; were open, light, dry, and accessible ; 
were on or near the line of communication between the ruined cities 
of Uxmal, Labna, Mayapan, Ticul, Mani, and Chichenitza, and were 
during the dry season almost the only natural sources of water supply. 
“If ever human refuse layers on the floors of caverns were to reveal 
the conditions of a lost human chronology, such layers might be 
looked for in these caves, the first group of which existed, as we were 
told, at Calcehtok, and the second at Tabi, about half way on a 
straight line between Uxmal and Ticul.” 
About two months were spent in the search. ‘Twenty-nine caves 
were visited, thirteen of which had archeological significance. ‘“‘ Six 
yielded valuable, and three decisive results.” Human relics were 
found in abundance in the upper layers of the earthy floor of the 
caverns, but not in the lower layers (except as occasionally found in 
animal burrows). Of the fourteen feet of cave earth found resting 
on the solid limestone floor, in one of the most satisfactory excava- 
tions, only the upper six contained human relics, while the lower 
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