312 " T. C. CHAM BERLIN 



total range, using the mininium estimates of our table, is over four 

 thousand centuries, and yet the deposits embrace a thickness of 

 only six feet, the lowest layer of which was not deposited until some 

 time after the last retreat of the sea from the mainland. This 

 serves to indicate the stress the case has put on accepted criteria. 

 With this aspect of the case in mind, let us note the essence of the 

 several contributions to the symiposia. 



Further contributions from the viewpoint of the state geologist. — 

 The two further contributions of -Dr. Elias H. Sellards have the 

 same import as his earher papers already sketched. He, however, 

 adds certain more declared statements that bear strongly on intru- 

 sive burial, on transfer by water and other natural agencies, and 

 on original burial where now found.^ Among these are the absence 

 of whole skeletons, the infrequency of even complete individual 

 bones, the scattered and imperfectly preserved state of the bones, 

 their frequent and often sharply broken condition, together with 

 evidence that ''in the case both of the human and of the other 

 vertebrates the bones were more or less disturbed after they had 

 lost enough of their organic matter to become sufficiently brittle 

 to break as they were moved about by water before reaching their 

 final resting place. "^ "In the number of bones that have been 

 obtained representing a single individual there is observed no 

 important difference between the human and the other animals."^ 



The contribution from the physico-dynamic inquiry. — At the 

 first conference an attempt was made by Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin^ 

 to discriminate as closely as practicable what had been done at the 

 successive formative stages, whether constructive or destructive, 

 so as to give an analytical basis for the treatment of the special 

 question under debate and for reconciling, so far as might be, the 

 seemingly incompatible import of different criteria as then inter- 

 preted. The several episodes distinguished were as follows: the 

 already well-recognized coquina marl, the datum base (Sellards' 

 No. i); the sand-capping over this and the formation of beach 

 ridges and dunes; the gathering of fresh- water marl deposits, 

 containing vertebrate remains, in the hollows of this low ridged 



'Symposium i, Jour. Geol., XXV (January-February, 1917), i, 22. 

 =^ Ibid., p. 23. . 3 Ibid., pp. 25-39. 



