On another hand, although in the beginning the sepulchers were taken to pieces and carried away (two of them imperfectly reconstructed may be seen in the garden of the Cadizian Museum), there will be an opportunity of making prevail the system of maintaining in situ the various monuments that may hereafter be discovered.  Thus only could one, at a given moment, obtain an accurate idea of what the Phenician necropolis of Cadiz was, and allow the structures that compose it to preserve their imposing stamp of rustic indestructibility.

The excavation is being carried on at this very moment, and a bronze statuette of an oriental god and various trinkets of more or less value have just enriched the municipal collection.  Let us hope, then, as was recently predicted by Mr. Clermont Ganneau, of the Institute, that some day or another some Semitic inscription will throw a last ray of light upon the past, which is at present so imperfectly known, of Phenician Cadiz.—­L’Illustration.

* * * * *

PREHISTORIC HORSE IN AMERICA.

To the Editor of the Scientific American: 

Apropos to Professor Cope’s remarks before the A.A.A.S. at Washington, reported in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, September 12, inclose sketch of a mounted man, whether on a horse or some other mammal, is a question open to criticism.

[Illustration:  Height, 43 in.; length, 63 in.  San Rafiel del Sur, 1878 Drawn for and forwarded to Peabody Museum—­No. 53.]

The figure seems incomplete—­whether a cloven foot or toes were intended, cannot say.

A large fossil horse was exhumed in the marsh north of Granada, when ditching in 1863.  Then Lake Managua’s outlet at Fipitapa ceased its usual supply of water to Lake Nicaragua.  When notified of the discovery the spot was under water.  Only one of the very large teeth was given to me, which was forwarded to Prof.  Baird, of Smithsonian—­Private No. 34.

When Lake Nicaragua was an ocean inlet, its track extended to foot hills northward.  Its waterworn pebbles and small bowlders were subsequently covered by lake deposit, during the time between the inclosure and break out at San Carlos.  In this deposit around the lake (now dry) fossil bones occur—­elephas, megatherium, horse, etc.  The large alluvium plains north of lake, cut through by rivers, allow these bones to settle on their rocky beds.  This deposit is of greater depth in places west of lake.

Now, if we suppose these animals were exterminated in glacial times, it remains for us to show when this was consummated.

Subsequent to the lake deposit and exposure no new proofs of its continuance are found.

1.  This deposit occurred after the coast range was elevated.

2.  Elevation was caused by a volcanic ash eruption, 5 or 6 of a series. (Geologically demonstrated in my letters to Antiquarian and Science.)