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MAP OF YUCATAN SHOWING LOCATION OF INLAND RUINS. 
In hisreport of the work donein Yucatan, Professor Holmes grace- 
_ fully refers to the fact that Mr. Allison V. Armour, of Chicago, took 
_ him to Mexico in his yacht, and in every way in his power aided the | 
enterprise. It is pleasant to record that not all of our young men of 
wealth are given over to the gratification of self. ‘That the author of 
this admirable report has the imagination of the artist, as well as the 
accuracy of the scientist, is shown by this extract from his intro- 
duction : 
We are told by the early Greek historians that a broad continent, 
known as Atlantis, once spread out over what is now the middle Atlantic 
Ocean ; that this land was inhabited by a vigorous and cultured race of 
people who carried their arms westward to the furthest limits of the Medi- 
terranean, and that the Greek gods, righteously angered by these encroach- 
ments, retaliated by sending Atlantis to the bottom of the sea. It has 
been a favorite theory with many students that the American races may 
have been derived from this source, inheriting therefrom the germs of that 
strange culture now represented by somany ruined cities. Whatever may 
be the truth with respect to the disappearance of the one continent, it is 
a curious fact that another land has risen from its watery bed. We are 
able to clearly show, by the aid of geology, that a large part of the great 
block of éerra firma, now known as Yucatan, isa new-born realm. The 
massive beds of limestone, of which the peninsula is formed, contain, and 
are largely made up of, the remains of the marine forms of life now flour- 
ishing along the shores. Fossil shells, obtained from the rocks in various 
parts of the country, are all of living species, and represent the late Pliocene © 
or early Plaistocene times, thus possibly bringing the date of the elevation 
of Yucatan down somewhat near that of the reported sinking of Atlantis, 
some eleven or twelve thousand years ago, or not far from the period that 
witnessed the oscillations attending the close of the glacial period. 
