Among the fossil remains of the human species supposed to have claims to high antiquity, and which have for many years attracted attention, two of the most prominent examples are:-- First--"The fossil man of Denise," comprising the remains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia near the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France. Secondly--The fossil human bone of Natchez, on the Mississippi, supposed to have been derived from a deposit containing remains of Mastodon and Megalonyx. Having carefully examined the sites of both of these celebrated fossils, I shall consider in this chapter the nature of the evidence on which the remote date of their entombment is inferred. FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE. An account of the fossil remains, so called, was first published in 1844 by M. Aymard of Le Puy, a writer of deservedly high authority both as a palaeontologist and archaeologist.* (* "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France" 1844, 1845, 1847.) M. Pictet, after visiting Le Puy and investigating the site of the alleged discovery, was satisfied that the fossil bones belonged to the period of the last volcanic eruptions of Velay; but expressly stated in his important treatise on palaeontology that this conclusion, though it might imply that Man had co-existed with the extinct elephant, did not draw with it the admission that the human race was anterior in date to the filling of the caverns of France and Belgium with the bones of extinct mammalia.* (* "Traite de Paleontologie" volume 1 1853 page 152.) At a meeting of the "Scientific Congress" of France, held at Le Puy in 1856, the question of the age of the Denise fossil bones was fully gone into, and in the report of their proceedings published in that year, the opinions of some of the most skilful osteologists respecting the point in controversy are recorded. The late Abbe Croizet, a most experienced collector of fossil bones in the volcanic regions of Central France, and an able naturalist, and the late M. Laurillard, of Paris, who assisted Cuvier in modelling many fossil bones, and in the arrangement of the museum of the Jardin, declared their opinion that the specimen preserved in the museum of Le Puy is no counterfeit. They believed the human bones to have been enveloped by natural causes in the tufaceous matrix in which we now see them.