790 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
universally absent. The uncovered vessel was exposed to the air 
and left untouched further than filling it up as the water evapo- 
rated, until April, 1835, or a period of two years. At the end of 
that time it was found that certain kinds had entirely disappeared, 
others had left some more or less recognizable traces ; whilst others, 
especially fungi, ferns and coniferous trees were comparatively 
well preserved. In short, the plants remaining and the plants 
which had disappeared were respectively of the same groups as 
those which are not present amongst the coal fossils.” He also 
remarks that it is well known that oyster and limpet shells are 
more frequently found fossil than cockles, and it was found by 
Mr. Sorby that the carbonate of lime in the shells of limpets, oys- 
ters and other molluscs, were turned into calcite, while cockles 
and their allies were changed into arragonite, the latter being 
liable to disappear. He also says that after the conversion of 
_ the Lake of Haarlem into dry land, when thirty to forty thousand 
men had been buried in its land, or drowned in its waters, and 
thousands of miles of trenches and canals were dug through this 
made land, no human bones had been found, and only a few relics 
of human art. As direct evidence that the bones of man have 
been found mingled with those of extinct animals, he cites the 
following facts :— In 1824 Rey. Dr. Fleming stated that ‘man was 
an inhabitant of this country at the time these animals, now ex- 
tinct, flourished, his bones and his instruments having been found 
in similar situations with their remains.” M. Wre pe Gesa 
1831, discovered “an undoubted human skull, very perfect and in 
good preservation” in the floor of a cave, mingled with the bones of 
“extinct and recent animals.” In 1833—’4, Dr. Schmerling of 
Liége, in a cave in the valley of the Meuse, discovered certain de- 
posits which ‘‘were covered with a floor of unbroken stalagmite, 
and contained the commingled remains of extinct and recent ani- 
mals, including man,” among which were several skulls, including 
the celebrated Engis skull. In 1840, Mr. Godwin Austin remarked 
that the bones of man occurred in Kent’s Cavern, Torquay, ” under 
precisely the same conditions as the bones of all the other ani- 
mals.” In 1841 he added, “at Kent’s Hole, near Torquay, ar- 
rows and knives of flint, with human bones, in the same condi- 
tion as the elephant and other bones, were found in an undisturbed 
bed of clay, covered by nine feet of stalagmite.” 
“The late Col. Hamilton Smith devoted a section of his “ Natu- 
