610 The American Naturalist. [July, 
River, Jefferson County, Tennessee,) visited by Professor Cope in 1869. 
Dislocated as before after the flesh had rotted, the bones were crushed 
= by a force which had split them into fragments, and were deposited 
with a mass of clay mixed with lime, which filled the descending cave. 
Hardened finally into breccia not easily broken with the pickaxe, 
this bone bearing earth had disappeared at many points to make 
room for a deposit of cave earth containing the remains of the Rattle- 
snake, Woodchuck, Opossum, Rabbit and Cave Rat. It is the 
important relation of this latter modern earth, with its bits of mica 
and Indian pottery, to the older breccia that will constitute the 
material for a final report. 
Previous examination, in 1893, at the Lookout Cave, (left bank of 
the Tennessee River, one-quarter of a mile below Chattanooga Creek, 
Hamilton County, Tennessee,) had revealed the bones of the Tapir 
and Mylodon in the lowermost zone of a floor deposit of Indian refuse, 
and upon the recent expedition the cave earth with its“ culture layer” 
was entirely removed for 58 feet inward from the entrance to settle 
beyond doubt the relation of these fossils to the Indian remains resting 
upon them. At this significant spot, where again the Plistocene and 
recent deposits lay in contact, and where the specimens found were 
labeled according to their position, whether from the black (modern) 
earth above or the yellow (ancient) earth below, a completed examina- 
tion should decide whether Man had or had not encountered the Tapir 
and Mylodon in the Valley of the Tennessee. 
After a visit to “ Indian Cave” on the Holston River, Carrol’s Cave, 
and the Copperas and Bone Caves, near Tullahoma and Manchester, 
Tennessee, a new set of conditions was presented at Big Bone Cave 
(1 mile from the left bank of Caney Fork and about 2 miles above its — : 
-mouth in Rocky River, Van Buren County, Tennessee.) There the 
bones of the Gigantic Fossil Sloth (Megalonyz,) still retaining their — 
cartilages, were exhumed from a dry deposit of the refuse of Porcu- ` 
pines and Cave Rats, mingled with fragments of reeds used as torches 
by Indians in a gallery 900 feet from the entrance, thus presenting us 
< in the final summing up of this strange evidence a new notion of the 
relation of the modern Indian to this extinct animal, whose remains @ 
outnumber all its fossil contemporaries at Port Kecsedy. 
Thanks are due to Dr. William Pepper, to the Board of Managers 
and to Professor E. D. Cope for their kind co-operation in the expedi- 
tion thus finished, which, at a cost of $300, has presented the Museum 
with the specimens now under examination. These, if not attractive, 
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