282 The Fossil Human Skeleton from Guadaloupe. 



portion of the rock given by Mr. Koenig, from the British 

 Museum specimen, to which they were said to have originally 

 belonged. They were brought from Guadaloupe by M. L'Her- 

 nriniere, and placed in the museum of the Literary and Philo- 

 sophical Society of South Carolina, in August 1816, and were 

 purchased in the November following by the Medical College 

 of the State, for its Museum in Charleston. " These relics," 

 says Dr. Moultrie, " have been supposed to belong to the head 

 of an individual of the Carib race. This is undoubtedly a 

 mistake. The anterior posterior diameter is too short, the 

 occipital region too flat, and the lateral and vertical develop- 

 ments too full, upon a reconstruction of the cranium, to justify 

 such a supposition. Compared with the cranium of a Peruvian 

 in the Museum of the Medical College of the State of South 

 Carolina, the craniological similarity manifested between them 

 is too striking to permit us to question their national identity." 

 Without attaching too much importance to this ethnological 

 opinion, it may yet be doubted whether the interment of the 

 skeletons was quite so recent as supposed by General Ernouf. 

 Admiral Cochrane has suggested the probability that it took 

 place before the sea had encroached upon that portion of the 

 shore, so as to cover it at high water, a change of no great 

 amount, as the tides in the Antilles only amount to two or 

 three feet ; and the volcanic activity of La SoufFriere, in Guada- 

 loupe, may well have caused such a slight oscillation of level on 

 a neighbouring shore. The beach must have consisted of loose 

 sand at the time of the interment of the bodies, and the 

 process of solidification may have taken place gradually, as 

 indicated by the subsidence and displacement of some of the 

 bones. The narrative of Admiral Cochrane, and the statement 

 of Mr. Kcenig, equally convey the impression that the coral 

 sand formed a sort of concretionary mass around the bodies, 

 which doubtless supplied the phosphoric acid since detected in 

 the stone. If Guadaloupe was densely wooded like most of 

 the West Indian Islands when first discovered by Europeans, 

 it would have been equally natural for the savage inhabitants 

 to guard against hostile intrusion, or settle their own private 

 differences, and bury their dead on the open sandy shore. 

 There are great accumulations of shell-sand at the Island of 

 Ascension, described by Mr. Darwin, and to them the turtles 

 come to bury their eggs : it sometimes happens that the beach 

 consolidates before the young are hatched, and when quarried 

 for building purposes, the petrified eggs containing bones of 

 the little turtles are exposed to view, as in the specimen pre- 

 sented by Mrs. Kenyon to the Geological Society. Deposits of 

 calcareous sand are also cemented by the percolation of fresh 

 water, as mentioned by Sir Alexander Cochrane. The ancient 



