LECTUEE X. 293 



and its contemporaries. Dr. Dickeson showed me the bone in 

 question^ admitted by anatomists to be part of a human pelviSj 

 being a fragment of the os innominatum. He felt persuaded 

 that it had been taken out of the clay underlying the loam, in 

 the ravine alluded to, about six miles from Natchez. I ex- 

 amined the perpendicular clifis which bound a part of this 

 watercourse, where the loam, unsolidified as it is, retains its 

 verticality, and found landshells in great number at the depth 

 of about thirty feet from the top. I was informed that the 

 fossil remains of the mammoth (a name commonly applied in 

 the United States to the mastodon) had been obtained, toge- 

 ther with the bones of some other extinct mammalia, from 

 below these shells in the undermined cliff. The bones were 

 stained or black, and were in the same condition as the fossil 

 bones of other mammals with which they were found." Never- 

 theless, Lyell was then of opinion that the bone might have 

 been dislodged from some old Indian grave near the top. 

 Now, he observes, such a theory would not be resorted to if 

 the bones belonged to any other animal, but as this discovery 

 of a human pelvis was the first he ever heard of, he ventured 

 an explanation which he at present is not inclined to insist upon. 

 On reviewing all these discoveries, we are forced to admit that 

 the facts are few in number, though they furnish us with some 

 starting points, which deserve our attention. We are entitled 

 to assume that the cave population, in which the carnivora pre- 

 dominate, was contemporary with the elephant and the rhino- 

 ceros, whose remains are chiefly found in the stratified alluvial 

 formation. The appearance of both may have been simulta- 

 neous, though they may have become extinct at different 

 epochs. We must take into particular consideration, that just 

 from the appearance of the cave-bears and the mammoth dates 

 an uninterrupted chain of phenomena reaching down to the 

 present period : that at different periods species became ex- 

 tinct or were exterminated by man, whilst, perhaps, some new 

 species, though few in number, were developed. It is, there- 

 foi'e, not surprising, that if man appeared on the scene simul- 

 taneously with the cave-bear and the mammoth, some species 

 of mankind should also have become extinct, whilst others 



