Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/218

200 assembled naturalists at Le Puy, that the skull of the 'fossil man of Denise,' although contemporary with the mammoth, and coeval with the last eruptions of the Le Puy volcanoes, should be of the ordinary Caucasian or European type; but the observations of Professor Huxley on the Engis skull, cited in the fifth chapter, showing the near approach of that ancient cranium to the European standard, will help to remove this source of perplexity.

I have already alluded to Dr. Dowler's attempt to calculate, in years, the antiquity of the human skeleton said to have been buried under four cypress forests in the delta of the Mississippi, near New Orleans (see page 43). In that case no remains of extinct animals were found associated with those of man: but in another part of the basin of the Mississippi, a human bone, accompanied by bones of the mastodon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed out of a more ancient alluvial deposit.

After visiting the spot in 1846, I described the geological position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with

a stronger bias, I must confess, as to the antecedent improbability of the contemporaneous entombment of man and the mastodon than any geologist would now be justified in entertaining.

In the latitude of Vicksburg 32º 50' N., the broad, flat, alluvial plain of the Mississippi, a b, fig. 26, is bounded on