THE PLIOCENE SKULL OF CALTFORINTA 637 
nails, spikes, shot and bullets are frequently found in cleaning 
up the sluices. In one instance, known to the writer, a small 
cast-iron casket containing the remains of an infant in alcohol 
was found in cleaning up a sluice after a long run by the hydraulic 
process upon a bank of gravel some thirty feet deep. 
THE TABLE MOUNTAIN RELICS 
Much has been written regarding the flint implements in great 
variety and perfection of workmanship collected from Table 
Mountain near Angels Camp by the late Dr. Snell. It was 
stated by him that they were found under Table Mountain, the 
lava cap of an old Pliocene river. I must confess to have for a 
time lent credence to this view of their occurrence. I reported 
the facts as I then understood them at the Congress of Arche- 
ologists at Paris in 1867. 
But later investigations have satisfied me that these relics 
"were entombed in the surface soil and accumulations of the slope 
of the mountain just below the jutting, overhanging cliffs of the 
lava, which afforded excellent protection from the weather, and 
were no doubt occupied as habitations or dwellings analogous to 
the cliff-dwellings of New Mexico and Arizona, but without any, 
now visible, exterior wall or construction. There is no reason 
for associating these flint implements in any way with the occur- 
rence of the skull, or with the bones of the great mammals. 
Wy. P. BLAKE. 
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, 
March 1899. 
