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additional proof is afforded not only of the very high 
antiquity of these relics, but also of the individual to whom 
they belonged. For if we find tusks of elephants in a 
cave, the ivory of which exhibits little or no indications 
of decay, (and these are unhesitatingly allowed to be of a 
very remote date,) by what process of reasoning can we refer 
articles made of ivory, decomposing from the effects of time, 
and associated with the former, to a later or more recent date ? 
Again, I might refer to the extraordinary discovery 
by Messrs. Dickeson and Brown, in New Orleans, of a 
deposit of ten forests of cypress trunks of the same species 
which still exists in the locality, many of them of very great 
diameter, arranged vertically above each other, and separated 
by layers of earth. Above the most recent of these beds 
now grows a forest of evergreen oaks, the age of which 
alone is estimated at 1,500 years. At sixteen feet below the 
soil, and in the fourth of these beds from the surface, was 
found a well-preserved human skull, corresponding perfectly 
in its form with the skulls of the actual Aborigines of 
America, and accompanied by the remains of burnt wood, 
from which we must conclude that this country was inhabited 
ages ago by men of the American race, who have left in 
their burial mounds flint arrow and spear heads, and stone 
adzes, similar to those found in Europe. And further, these 
rude weapons have been found associated with the bones of 
the mastodon. In a conversation I had with Catlin, the 
American traveller, he informed me that Koch, who exhumed 
and brought to England the fine skeleton of the mastodon 
which is now in the British Museum, stated to him that with 
the bones of the above animal he found several flint arrow- 
heads ; and that one of these weapons had penetrated some depth 
into the substance of a leg bone. Poor Koch was much annoyed 
that his testimony upon this point was doubted, simply because 
it was heterodox and militated against the generally received 
