14 



HUMAN BONES IN COAL AND SANDSTONE. 



knowledge when engaged in a mineralogical examination for the 

 Earl of Moira, in the vicinity of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicester- 

 shire : it will evince how cautious we ought to be in drawing general 

 conclusions in geology, from single facts. A thick bed of coal be- 

 longing to his lordship, at a place called Ashby Wolds, is worked at 

 the depth of two hundred and twenty-five yards ; it is covered with 

 various strata of iron-stone, coal, and solid sandstone. On an estate 

 adjoining to his lordship's manor, in the same bed of coal (which is 

 ninety-seven yards below the surface), the entire skeleton of a man 

 was found imbedded. No appearance existed of any former sinking 

 for coal; but the proprietor ordered passages to be cut in different 

 directions, until the indication of a former pit was discovered, though 

 the coal had not been w^orked. Into this pit the body must have 

 fallen, and been pressed and consolidated in the loose coal by an in- 

 cumbent column of water, previously to the falling in of the sides of 

 the pit. 



The imperfect skeleton of a woman, imbedded in a kind of cal- 

 careous sandstone, brought from Guadaloupe, and exhibited in the 

 British Museum, may appear to invalidate what was asserted in the 

 first edition of this work, that no instances have been known of hu- 

 man bones being found in regular stratified rocks, nor even in undis- 

 turbed alluvial ground, where the remains of extinct species of quad- 

 rupeds are not unfrequently met with.^ Due attention to all the cir- 

 cumstances, will reconcile that assertion with the present fact. The 

 skeleton from Guadaloupe is described as having been found on the 

 shore, below the high-water mark, among calcareous rocks formed of 

 madrepores, and not far from the volcano called the SoufFriere. The 

 bones are not petrified, but preserve the usual constituents of fresh 

 bone, and were rather soft when first exposed to the air. Speci- 

 mens of the stone which I have in my possession, that were chipped 

 from the same block, present, when examined with a lens, the ap- 

 pearance of smooth grains, consisting of rounded fragments of shells 

 and coral, aggregated and united without any visible cement. 



We have an example of a similar formation of calcareous sand- 

 stone on the north coast of Cornwall, composed entirely of minute 



* Since the publication of the first and second editions of this work, I have seen, 

 in the possession of a gentleman at Plymouth, one of two human skulls that were 

 found in digging a stream work, forty or fifty feet below the level of the river at 

 Carnon in Cornwall. Nats, and the horns of some animal allied to the stag, were 

 discovered in the same situation. — In a note which 1 made at the time, (1816,) it 

 is stated, that the forehead was remarkably low and narrow, and the part of the 

 skull which contained the cerebellum unusually prominent. That these skulk 

 were ancient there can be little doubt, but there are no sufficient data to enable us 

 to approximate to the period of their deposition. 



The bone was not mineralised, though very hard. The absence or extreme 

 rarity of human bones in thes6 beds of gravel and clay, or in caves that contain 

 the remains of large land quadrupeds, is far more extraordinary than their non- 

 occurrence in the regular strata that cover cur present contments. 



