SCIENTIFIC SUMMAEY. 
313 
head of coral or from the solid bank on which the corals were growing : and 
further, that the use of an “ excellent spirit level,” from a stone of so 
little length, is not sufficiently exact for correct results. Hence they 
draw no conclusion from their results. Before leaving the region 
they made the following arrangements with reference to future mea- 
surements. They planted two blocks of coral, cementing them below 
and nearly burying them in the soil, placing them 0'21 metres above the 
Wilkes stone, which is between them; they then put a mark upon them on 
plates of metal, directed towards the place of observation on the shoal. A 
third stone was placed 40 metres from the south-west angle of the Point 
Venus Lighthouse, in order to give a second observation on the position of 
the spot on which soundings were to be made. This spot was found to 
bear from the two new stones N. 77° 30' E. ; from the third stone N. 70° 
55' E. ; from the bell of the new mission church S. 81° 40' E. A horizontal 
line passing from the mark on the new stone is 7*460“ above the madreporic 
heads. This observation they leave for comparison with future measure- 
ments. They observe that the principal coral of the bank is the Madrepora 
plantaginea. They farther made observations that satisfied them that 
Tahiti was not at present undergoing any general elevation. Two maps 
accompany the pamphlet : one is copied from Wilkes ; the other is from a 
chart by MM. Le Clerc and Minier, lieutenants of the vessel. 
Relics of a Stone-age Homestead. — Dr. Charles C. Abbot has written an able 
paper on this subject in the ‘^American Naturalist” for May, 1873, in 
which he describes some very interesting relics recently found by him. 
These were met with in a circumscribed spot of about thirty feet in diameter, 
and some twenty inches below the surface of the ground. The floor of this 
“ homestead,” as we have called it, was very hard and compact ; the soil 
being of a darker colour than the superincumbent earth, and well mixed 
witt. small oval gravel stones, of a noticeably uniform size. At one side 
of the nearly circular spot was a well-defined fire-place, marked by a circle 
of oval white stones, six to eight inches in length, and half that in thickness. 
Within this circle was a layer of ashes and charcoal, seven inches deep in 
the centre, and three at the margin of the fire-place. This coal and ash 
deposit showed, on careful examination, a considerable percentage of minute 
fragments of mussel shell, and of small fragments of bones, too much 
splintered to identify, but apparently the long bones of wading birds and 
of the larger fishes. Several other remains were also found, and have been 
well described by the author, who, in conclusion, asks the following ques- 
tion; — “Whence came the people who once occupied this spot, and left 
these abundant traces of their sojourn here ? Marking the degree of civili- 
sation, or rather, of its absence, as estimated by these relics, does it, indeed, 
seem possible, as sketched by Haeckel, that from hypothetical Lemuria, in 
the Indian Ocean, a being worthy then to be called a man, could finally, 
after many ages, reach North-west America, and then cross our broad 
continent, to reach the Atlantic coast, in a state of advancement only equal 
to the production of such rude stone implements as we have described ? 
We do not doubt the correctness of the theory of the evolution of man from 
creatures not men, but that the ancestors of the American red-skin lived 
nearer home than the Indian Ocean, we cannot but think.” 
