Note 1 — XV

Prehistoric remainsIn 1851, during the construction of a road a little beyond Libmanan, at a place called Poro, a bed of shells was dug up under four feet of mould, one hundred feet distant from the river. It consisted of Cyrenae (C. suborbicularis, Busch.), a species of bivalve belonging to the family of Cyclades which occurs only in warm waters, and is extraordinarily abundant in the brackish waters of the Philippines. On the same occasion, at the depth of from one and a half to three and a half feet, were found numerous remains of the early inhabitants—skulls, ribs, bones of men and animals, a child’s thighbone inserted in a spiral of brass wire, several stags’ horns, beautifully-formed dishes and vessels, some of them painted, probably of Chinese origin; striped bracelets, of a soft, gypseous, copper-red rock, gleaming as if they were varnished;1 small copper knives, but no iron utensils; and several broad flat stones bored through the middle;2 besides a wedge of petrified wood, embedded in a cleft branch of a tree. The place, which to this day may be easily recognized in a hollow, might, by excavation systematically carried on, yield many more interesting results. What was not immediately useful was then and there destroyed, and the remainder dispersed. In spite of every endeavor, I could obtain, through the kindness of Señor Fociños in Naga, only one small vessel. Similar remains of more primitive inhabitants have been found at the mouth of the Bigajo, not far from Libmánan, in a shell-bed of the same kind; and an urn, with a human skeleton, was found at the mouth of the Perlos, west of Sitio de Poro, in 1840. At the time when I wrote down these statements of the priest, neither of us was familiar with the discoveries made within the last few years relating to the lake dwellings (pile villages); or these notes might have been more exact, although probably they would not have been so easy and natural.