632 WM. P. BLAKE 
of all a human skull, could not remain intact, or even so well 
preserved a fragment as the skull in question, under such violent 
and abrasive conditions—conditions resulting in the rounding 
of the edges of pebbles and bowlders and in flattening out pel- 
lets of gold. 
Those familiar with the auriferous gravel deposits, even of 
slight depth in modern rivers, know how the smaller materials 
fill every interstice of the bedrock, and, in the case of the bones 
of the mammoth and of the mastodon, how the foramens of the 
teeth and any cavity of the more solid bones of the jaw become 
filled up solidly with fine gravel, often cemented, and sometimes 
holding pellets of gold. Bones found in river gravels show the 
effects of attrition and wearing. All the thin plates, asperities, 
and sharp edges disappear under the violence to which they are 
subjected in running water transporting gravel. 
In the Calaveras skull no such conditions are found. It was 
found hollow, nearly empty as left by the decomposed brain, not 
filled with gravel or sand, of a river deposit, and the broken 
edges were sharp and not abraded. This condition alone is suf- 
ficient evidence that the skull and the gravel in which it was said 
to occur were not parts of the same deposit and contemporane- 
ous in origin in the river bed. 
But certain objects were found in the skull—other bones, an 
ornament of some kind, and the shell of a snail, partially cemented 
together and to the skull by a deposit of calcareous tufa. All 
these objects indicate surface origin and interment, and their 
presence is not reconcilable with any theory of the entombment 
of the skull in auriferous, deep-seated gravel. 
Since the exhibition of the skull at Chicago a full description 
of it, illustrated by a full-sized drawing, has been published by 
Professor Whitney." By reference to this drawing it will be 
seen that all the fractured edges of the bones (for it is not an 
entire skull) are sharp and angular, and do not show signs of 
abrasion. 
tContributions to American Geology, Vol. I. The Auriferous Gravels of the 
Sierra Nevada, California, by J. D. Whitney, gto, Cambridge [U. S.], 1880. 
