274 



BONE CAVE AT PORT KENNEDY. 



But labor as we would the bones fell to pieces. In the interlaced tangle, the 

 trowel destroyed more than it recovered. Not one-third of the skeletal remains 

 found whole in the bank were saved or could be saved, while nine-tenths of the 

 remaining number were crushed beyond recognition or reduced to masses of rotten 

 splinters. Of the rescued specimens the majority were at best broken and distorted. 



Fig. 4 (scale about four-thirteenths).— SPECIMEN ILLUSTRATING THE METHOD OF RECOVERING 

 FOSSILS AT PORT KENNEDY. 



Portion of the skull and upper jaw of the -pleistocene bear, Ursus haplodon, about the size of the modern grizzly. 

 Found in the Port Kennedy Cave at B, 5-9. 



Deposited as a fragment by the transporting agent, the bones have been squeezed against each other, cracked 

 and distorted by subsequent down settling of the debris. Saturated with water, and almost as soft as wet blotting 

 paper when found, the mass, while in the bank, was cased on the opposite side with the plaster crusts still shown 

 at its edges. On removal, and after partial drying, the mud covering the whole specimen was taken off with a knife. 



Most rotten, soft and shattered were skulls, ribs, pelves, scapulae, femurs, tibiae and 

 radii. In better condition were the jaws. Next came soft but generally unbroken 

 carpals and astragali, while the enamel-protected teeth had held out best of all. But 

 evidently the transporting agency which had deposited the bones had not been the 

 event which had killed the creatures ; on the contrary, as before suggested, the 

 evidence showed that animals previously dead, had lain somewhere long enough 

 after death for the flesh to rot away from the bones, and for the bones themselves 

 to become soft enough to break into fragments, when the carrying agent, seizing 

 them, had jostled them along with stones and mud into their present position. 



Evidence of the Action of Water. 

 First and last, evidence of the winnowing of material, characteristic of water- 

 action attracted our attention. Cream-colored and yellowish-gray and black band- 



