792 NATURAL. HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
depth of eighteen feet; and eight feet below, two phalanges of a 
rhinoceros.” 
Other discoveries, made since 1860, and well known to our 
readers, are alluded to. -The writer might have added the case, 
now apparently well authenticated, of the human skull found by 
Professor Whitney, under Table Mountain, California, associated 
with remains of the mastodon. 
FRESH DISCOVERIES or PLATYCNEMIC MEN IN DENBIGHSHIRE.— 
Mr. W. Boyd Dawkins records in ‘“‘ Nature” the opening of some 
freshly discovered bone-caves in Denbighshire, Wales, in which 
were discovered the remains of men with the skulls rather above 
than below the present ordinary cranial capacity, but with some of 
the leg-bones remarkable for the peculiar antero-posterior flatten- 
ing or platycnemism of the shin bones. They are associated with 
the remains of sheep or goat, pig, fox, badger and stag, and with 
four flint flakes. The interest of the discovery consists in the fact 
that the group of caves, which has been used by a race of herds- 
men in long-forgotten times as habitations and burial places, must 
be referred to the Neolithic age. And we can now be certain that 
those people who haye manifested the peculiar flattening forwards 
of the shin in Denbighshire belong to that age. Itis a point also 
well worthy of note that the cranial capacity of these Neolithic 
men was not inferior to that of the average civilized man, although 
the ridges and processes for muscles indicated a greater physical 
power.— A. W. B. 
GEOLOGY. 
GEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION To Kansas.—I write to give a brief 
account of the expedition of seventeen days which I have just 
made in the valley of the Smoky Hill river in Kansas. Through 
the courtesy of General John Pope commanding the department 
of the Missouri, I was furnished with an order on the post com- 
mandant at Fort Wallace for a suitable escort. This was fur- 
nished by Captain E. Butler (Fifth infantry), who spared no pains 
to make the expedition a success. 
We first camped at a spring eighteen miles south of Fort Wal- 
lace, and five miles south of Butte Creek. It had a fine flow of 
water, and being without a name I called it Fossil Spring. On a 
bluff on Butte Creek, Lieutenant Whitten discovered the frag- 
