286 BONE CAVE AT PORT KENNEDY. 



Summary. 



The results of the work thus far may be summed up as follows : We have 

 proven by protracted observation the existence of a fossil deposit of great variety 

 and unknown extent continuing in undiminished quantity downward and inward 

 beyond the reach of our last digging. Learning that the remains were deposited 

 in strata, ground, crushed, broken, and mixed with pebbles, proving their depo- 

 sition by water, we have determined phenomena indicating the existence of at 

 least one great inundation of the Schuylkill Valley and possibl}-' two in pleistocene 

 time. We have found evidence to show with reasonable certainty that the original 

 configuration of the fissure was that of a deep well-like chasm opening vertically 

 downward from the sloping surface of a hill, and have discovered ground for sup- 

 posing that the animals stampeded by a flood had rushed simultaneously to their 

 destruction into the abyss, when, after the decomposition of their flesh, a second 

 freshet, or series of freshets, had redeposited their dislocated and softened bones. 

 Recording the position of numbers of bones, and preserving them for study, we 

 have gathered data as to families of animals which, like the wolverine, badger and 

 porcupine, have survived, and as to others, like the skunk, which have changed 

 with the lapse of time. We have recovered the remains of genera which, by lack 

 of change, prove their present antiquity. We have traced northward the distribu- 

 tion of the tapir and peccary, thrown light upon the skeletal characteristics of the 

 family of sloths, and gathered a hint as to the fate of the American horse. Failing 

 to discover the American reindeer, we have found the beaver without trace of the 

 larger castoroides, the mastodon without the mammoth, thus offering paleontology 

 a standard for comparison with which other discoveries might be tested while illus- 

 trating the faunal conditions of a geological epoch immediately preceding the present, 

 alleged to have witnessed the presence of man on the American continent. 



