ANCIENT MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 279 
pelvis had been discovered in this ancient deposit. The 
site of the discovery was a ravine cut in the loess deposit 
by a tributary stream. Lyell visited the ravine to 
examine the details of the discovery for himself. 
"I satisfied myself," he writes/ "that the ravine had 
been considerably enlarged and lengthened a short time 
before my visit. From a clayey deposit, immediately 
under the yellow loam, bones of the mastodon and the 
megalonyx (an extinct form of sloth) had been detached 
and fallen to the bottom of the clifF. Mingled with the 
rest, the pelvic bone {os innominatum) of a man was 
obtained by Dr Dickeson of Natchez, in whose collection 
I saw it. It appeared to be quite in the same state of 
preservation^ and was of the same black colour as the other 
fossils, and was believed to have come from a depth of 
about 30 feet from the surface," 
The pelvic bone thus brought to light differs in no 
respect from that of modern man : it differs materially 
from that of Neanderthal man. Professor Joseph Leidy, 
an expert palaeontologist of the highest rank, examined the 
specimen again in i"889,^ and observed that the degree 
of fossilisation was exactly the same as that of the bones 
of extinct mammals which were found with it, and that 
" it differs in no respect from an ordinary average specimen 
of the corresponding recent bone of man." 
Lyell was afraid to use the bone found at Natchez as 
evidence ; it seemed to him suggestive of too great an 
antiquity for man. He had calculated that the formation 
of the delta of the Mississippi had occupied a period of 
one hundred thousand years, and he recognised that the 
loam or loess lying over the fossil bones was older than 
the delta. The plateau at Natchez was, in his opinion, 
almost as old as the classical 100-foot terrace at Abbeville. 
He, therefore, was inclined to regard the pelvic bone as 
having slipped from a recent Indian grave in the loess 
deposit, and subsequently had become mingled with the 
bones of extinct animals. " No doubt," he adds, " had 
1 Antiquity of Man, ist edition, 1863, p. 202. 
2 See Dr Hrdlicka's account ; reference on p. 273. 
