104 
HUMAN BONES 
The occasional discovery of human bones and 
works of art in any stratum, within a few feet of 
the surface, affords no certain evidence of such 
remains being coeval with the matrix in wdiich 
they are deposited. The universal practice of 
interring the dead, and frequent custom ol 
placing various instruments and utensils in the 
ground with them, offer a ready explanation 
of the presence of bones of men in situations 
accessible for the purposes of burial. 
The most remarkable and only recorded case 
of human skeletons imbedded in a solid lime- 
stone rock, is that on the shore of Guadaloupe.* 
* One of these skeletons is preserved in the British Museum, 
and has been described by Mr. Kbnig’, in the Phil. Trans, for 1814, 
vol. civ. p. 101 . According to General Ernouf, (Lin. Trans. 1818, 
vol. xii. p. 53), the rock in which the human bones occur at 
Guadaloupe, is composed of consolidated sand, and contains also 
shells, of species now inhabiting the adjacent sea and land, to- 
gether with fragments of pottery, arrows, and hatchets of stone. 
The greater number of the bones are dispersed. One entire 
skeleton was extended in the usual position of burial ; another, 
which was in a softer sandstone, seemed to have been buried in 
the sitting position customary among the Caribs. The bodies thus 
differently interred, may have belonged to two different tribes. 
General Ernouf also explains the occurrence of the scattered 
bones, by reference to a tradition of a battle and massacre on 
this spot, of a tribe of Gallibis by the Caribs, about the year 
1710. These scattered bones of the massacred Gallibis were 
probably covered, by the action of the sea, with sand, which soon 
after became converted to solid stone. 
On the west coast of Ireland, near Killery Harbour, a sand 
bank, which is surrounded by the sea at high water, is at this 
time employed by the natives as a place of interment. 
