OCTOBEB 15, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



531 



number of years and the volumes II. to S. 

 (large octavo) are to he puhlished as soon as 

 the manuscript of each is finished, with the 

 assistance of numerous European and Amer- 

 ican specialists. This work, being thus 

 brought up to date according to modem stand- 

 ards, will be indispensable to all museums and 

 libraries of natural history. 



Volume I. will contain the mammalia, by 

 Mr. John A. Wolffsohn, C.M.Z.S., with nu- 

 merous original illustrations in black and col- 

 ored plates and photo-engravings in the text. 



M. J. E. 



SOTE ON THE OCCVRREXCE OF HUMAN 

 REMAINS IN CALIFORNIAN CAVES 



In the course of an investigation of some 

 of the limestone caverns in California during 

 the last four years, a number of cases have 

 been noted in which human remains were 

 found in such situations as to indicate that 

 their entombment was not of historically re- 

 cent date. In no instance have any specimens 

 been discovered which can be said to be of 

 Quaternary age, although some of the occur- 

 rences are of such nature that it would be 

 difficult to prove that the remains were buried 

 during the present period. 



The writer has already called attention' to 

 the occurrence of human remains in Mercer's 

 Cave in Calaveras County, and in the Stone 

 Man Cave in Shasta County, under conditions 

 which certainly suggest a considerable antiq- 

 uity. In Mercer's Cave a number of human 

 skeletal remains were found in close proxim- 

 ity to the bones of a Quaternary ground- 

 sloth. The bones of both sloth and man were 

 incrusted with a deposit of stalagmite,- the 

 incrustation on the sloth bones being consid- 

 erably thicker than that on the human re- 

 mains; and it is not probable that they were 

 buried at the same time. It is, however, true 

 that stalagmite deposits may be very uneven, 

 and it is possible that the covering on the 

 ground-sloth was formed in a shorter time 

 than the thinner layer on the human bones. 



The remains in Stone Man Cave were dis- 



• " Recent Cave Exploration in California," 

 1^ — . American Anthropologist, N. S., Vol. 8, No. 2, 

 p. 221. 



covered in a remote gallery of this extensive 

 cavern. The greater number of the bones were 

 embedded in a layer of stalagmite which en- 

 veloped them to the thickness of one eighth 

 of an inch or more. A vertebra which was 

 obtained many years ago from this locality is 

 found to have lost most of the organic mater- 

 ial, and the cavities are largely filled with 

 calcite crystals. 



In neither of the cases just described is it 

 possible to fix the age of the remains, but the 

 impression given in both instances is that 

 some centuries have elapsed since the skele- 

 tons came into the position in which they were 

 found. 



Another interesting occurrence of human 

 bones has recently been brought to the notice 

 of the writer by Dr. J. C. Hawver, of Auburn, 

 California. During the past few years Dr. 

 Hawver has engaged in an energetic explora- 

 tion of the limestone caves in the vicinity of 

 Auburn, partially at the instance of the Uni- 

 versity of California, but largely on his own 

 resources. Hawver Cave, discovered by him 

 and recently named in his honor, has been 

 explored and described by Mr. E. L. Furlong,' 

 but Dr. Hawver has continued the exploration 

 of this cavern farther than it was carried by 

 the university. In March, 1908, while at- 

 tempting to open what Dr. Hawver supposed 

 to be an ancient passageway into the lower 

 cave, a number of human bones were found at 

 a depth of twenty feet below the surface, under 

 a mass of cave earth, fallen rocks and soil, over 

 twelve feet in thickness. The remains lay at 

 the lower end of a passageway which has evi- 

 dently been closed for a long period. In this 

 case, as in that of Mercer's Cave, remains of 

 extinct animals undoubtedly of Quaternary 

 age were found near the human bones, but the 

 degree of alteration of the unquestionably 

 Quaternary bones differs from that in the 

 human skeletons. Some of the human bones 

 were embedded in a cemented breccia consist- 

 ing largely of angular fragments of lime- 

 stone. So far as examined the bones seem to 

 have lost most of their organic matter. A 

 fairly preserved skull in the collection does 

 not differ strikingly from the crania of the 



= Furlong, E. L., Science, N. S., Vol. 25, p. 392. 



