340 A. Winchell on the Prairies of the Mississippi Valley. 
of Egyptian mummies, where they must have lain for two or 
three thousand years. Prof. Gray does not fully credit the ac- 
count, but Dr. Carpenter, the eminent physiologist, gives it his 
full endorsement. Dr. Carpenter even goes so far as to give 
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eep in the earth, not by human agency, but bv some geological — 
change, it is impossible to say how long anteriorly to the ecrea- 
tion of man they may have been produced and buried, as in the 
following curious instance: Some well-diggers in a town on the 
Penobscot river, in the state of Maine, about 40 miles from the 
sea, came, at the depth of about 20 feet, upon a stratum of sand. 
This strongly excited their curiosity and interest, from the eit 
cumstance that no similar sand was to be found anywhere in the 
neighborhood, and that none like it was nearer than the ‘Bea- 
ach. As it was drawn up from the well it was placed in a 
pile by itself, an unwillingness having been felt to mix it with 
the stones and gravel which were also drawn up. But when 
the work was about to be finished, and the pile of stones and 
gravel to be removed, it was necessary also to remove the sand 
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only of the same nature as others less critically noted, which 
daily pass before our eyes, in the upspringing of vegetable forms 
from the diluvial materials thrown out of wells, cellars and 
other excavations. 
. Such a fact, so striking and so circumstantially aipaters 
i 
See * Carpenter's Elements of Physiology, Am. ed., p. 41. 
