bark of the southern cane (_Arundinaria macrosperma_) was discovered on Petit Anse Island in Vermillion Bay, Louisiana, in connection with the remains of a fossil elephant. This island, containing about five thousand acres, is the locality of an extraordinary mine of rock salt, discovered and worked considerably during the late rebellion. The salt is found in nearly all parts of the island at the depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the soil. The matting was discovered near the surface of the salt, and about two feet above it were the remains of an elephant, including the tusks. Prof. Henry was the first to call public attention to the matter in a notice based on the verbal statements of T. F. Cleu, Esq., who presented a specimen of the matting to the Smithsonian Institution.[117] In 1867, Prof. E. W. Hilgard and Dr. E. Fontaine, secretary of the New Orleans Academy of Sciences, examined the locality. We regret to say that the report made by the latter is so confused in its use of terms and so conflicting in its statements as to be of no service to science.[118] Prof. Hilgard is, on the contrary, clear on the subject. He considers the heap in which the matting, elephant bones, and subsequently pottery in great profusion, were found, “A mass of detritus washed down from the surrounding hills.” “The pottery,” he remarks, “at some points form veritable strata three and six inches thick.” He then adds in a note that “it is very positively stated that mastodon bones were found considerably _above_ some of the human relics. In a detrital mass, however, this cannot be considered a crucial test.”[119] Dr. Foster, after citing the above, interposes the objection, “That in an island whose area is less than eight miles square, there would be few floods of sufficient power to transport such heavy bones as the tusks and molars of mastodons to any considerable distance.”[120] Certainly the question is an open one, and in its present unsettled status proves nothing. The same uncertainty attaches itself to the discoveries of Dr. Lund, the distinguished Swedish naturalist, made many years ago in the bone caves of Minas Geraes, Brazil. This indefatigable investigator examined more than eight hundred caverns, and in only six were human remains found. In one instance out of the six, the remains were associated with the bones of animals now extinct, but the original stratification had been disturbed, and the presumption is that it was a case of comparatively recent interment.[121]