1892.] _ Archaeology and Ethnology. 629 
ilarity as though they had belonged together. They are well pre- 
served, firm in texture, and of a dark chocolate-brown color which has 
been attributed to ferruginous infiltration. They consist of a nearly 
entire skeleton of Megalonyz jeffersoni, teeth of the Megalonyx dissim- 
ilis and the Ereptodon priscus, bones of the Mylodon harlani, bones and 
teeth of the Mastodon americanus, and teeth of Equus major and Bison 
latifrons. Along with them is the os innominatum of a human subject. 
The question affecting the antiquity of man is whether these subjects, 
the bones of which were found together, were, when alive, contempor- 
aneous, and whether the evidence of age in one is evidence of age in 
the other. They were all presented to the Academy by Dr. Dickeson at 
the meeting in October, 1846; description thereof is to be found in 
the Proceedings of the Society for that year, vol. iii, p. 106. Dr. 
Dickeson reported at that time that they were discovered by him in a 
single deposit at the foot of the bluff in the vicinity of Natchez, Miss- 
issippi. He says “ The stratum that SARE these organic remains 
is a tenacious blue clay that uvial drift east of Natchez, 
and which diluvial deposit abounds in bones and teeth of the Mastodon 
giganteum; that they could not have drifted into the position in which 
they were found is manifest from several facts, first, that the plateau 
of blue clay is not appreciably acted on by those caùses that produce 
ravines in the superincumbent diluvium ; second, that the human bone 
was found at least two feet below the three associated skeletons of the 
Megalonyz, all of which, judging from the position or proximity of 
their several parts, had been quietly deposited in this locality inde- 
pendent of any active current or any other displacing powers; and 
lastly, because there is no mixture of diluvial drift with the blue clay, 
_ which latter retains its homogenous character equally in the higher 
parts which furnished the extinct quadrupeds and in its lower part 
which contained the remains of man.” These specimens thus found 
associated were made the subject of investigation by Sir Charles Lyell, 
and afterwards by Dr. Joseph Leidy, the latter having published a 
memoir with illustrations of the human bone in the Transactions of 
the Wagner Free Institute of Science, vol. ii, p. 9. He says “ It differs 
in no respect from an ordinary average specimen of the corresponding 
recent bone of man.” 
Dr. Leidy says Lyell expressed the opinion that, although the human 
bones may have been contemporaneous with those of the extinct ani- 
mals with which it has been found, he thought it more probable that 
it had fallen from one of the Indian graves and had become mingled 
with the older fossils which were dislodged from the deeper part of 
