during the whole winter. Rain, also, falls at rare intervals even in the
driest districts, as, for instance, during forty days, in 1726, at Chocope
(7 degrees 46'); this rain entirely ruined ("Ulloa" etc. page 18) the mud
houses of the inhabitants.) On the highest parts of the ledge, small
fragments of the shells were mingled with, and evidently in process of
reduction into, a yellowish-white, soft, calcareous powder, tasting
strongly of salt, and in some places as fine as prepared medicinal chalk.

FOSSIL-REMAINS OF HUMAN ART.

In the midst of these shells on San Lorenzo, I found light corallines, the
horny ovule-cases of Mollusca, roots of seaweed (Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill
found pieces of seaweed in an upraised pleistocene deposit in Scotland. See
his admirable Paper in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" volume 25
page 384.), bones of birds, the heads of Indian corn and other vegetable
matter, a piece of woven rushes, and another of nearly decayed COTTON
string. I extracted these remains by digging a hole, on a level spot; and
they had all indisputably been embedded with the shells. I compared the
plaited rush, the COTTON string, and Indian corn, at the house of an
antiquary, with similar objects, taken from the Huacas or burial-grounds of
the ancient Peruvians, and they were undistinguishable; it should be
observed that the Peruvians used string only of cotton. The small quantity
of sand or gravel with the shells, the absence of large stones, the width
and thickness of the bed, and the time requisite for a ledge to be cut into
the sandstone, all show that these remains were not thrown high up by an
earthquake-wave: on the other hand, these facts, together with the number
of dead shells, and of floating objects, both marine and terrestrial, both
natural and human, render it almost certain that they were accumulated on a
true beach, since upraised eighty-five feet, and upraised this much since
INDIAN MAN INHABITED PERU. The elevation may have been, either by several