tific inquiry. There is
the body; you can see it; you can touch it. It is not a skeleton, it is
a complete and uninjured body, preserved with an anthropological
object."

I did not attempt to controvert this singular and astounding assertion.

"If I could but wash this corpse in a solution of sulphuric acid,"
continued my uncle, "I would undertake to remove all the earthy
particles, and these resplendent shells, which are incrusted all over
this body. But I am without this precious dissolving medium.
Nevertheless, such as it is, this body will tell its own history."

Here the Professor held up the fossil body, and exhibited it with rare
dexterity. No professional showman could have shown more activity.

"As on examination you will see," my uncle continued, "it is only about
six feet in length, which is a long way from the pretended giants of
early days. As to the particular race to which it belonged, it is
incontestably Caucasian. It is of the white race, that is, of our own.
The skull of this fossil being is a perfect ovoid without any remarkable
or prominent development of the cheekbones, and without any projection
of the jaw. It presents no indication of the prognathism which modifies
the facial angle.[4] Measure the angle for yourselves, and you will find
that it is just ninety degrees. But I will advance still farther on the
road of inquiry and deduction, and I dare venture to say that this human
sample or specimen belongs to the Japhetic family, which spread over the
world from India to the uttermost limits of western Europe. There is no
occasion, gentlemen, to smile at my remarks."

[4] The facial angle is formed by two planes--one more or less vertical
which is in a straight line with the forehead and the incisors; the
other, horizontal, which passes through the organs of hearing, and the
lower nasal bone. Prognathism, in anthropological language, means that
particular projection of the jaw which modifies the facial angle.

Of course nobody smiled. But the excellent Professor was so accustomed
to beaming countenances at his lectures, that he believed he saw all his
audience laughing during the delivery of his learned dissertation.

"Yes," he continued, with renewed animation, "this is a fossil man, a
contemporary of the mastodons, with the bones of which this whole
amphitheater is covered. But if I am called on to explain how he came to
this place, how these various strata by which he is covered have falle