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If this were once a living man, he must have died ages and ages ago. If buried, the accumulated deposits upon his grave, in this low piece of ground, during thousands of years would have been deeper than three feet. If he were drowned, or if he lay down on the surface of the earth to die, the flesh would have decayed and dropped from his bones without petrification. If he were petrified in his present locality, we ought to find other petrifications in its immediate neighborhood, whereas all the twigs and branches which covered and surrounded him are free from the slightest encrustation.

Human bodies do not petrify in layers; but the strata in the Cardiff giant, especially on the left side, are as manifest as they are in a ledge of rocks. The eye brows, the tip of the nose, the breast and the thigh are of the same stratum, and the layers in the right arm are clearly of different degrees of density.

The conclusion seems irresistible that the giant is a work of art rather than of nature. The sculpture must have been done some years ago, or the lower parts of the figure would not have crumbled and been washed away by the sluggish oozing of the water through the soil.

Its age cannot antedate the present race of men, for the shape of the head and the features are entirely modern. The old-time people, as portrayed in the sculpture of Assyria and Egypt, had no such heads as this. The artist evidently took a corpse for a model and proportioned his colossal figure by careful measurement. He was thus enabled to secure the general anatomical accuracy for which his giant is remarkable. He followed the model very closely, not attempting to represent a living being, not venturing even to supply the missing hair. And these omissions, the result of inexperience, furnish, singularly enough, the principal arguments to the petrifactionists. For the popular opinion that the body and head are hollow, that the nostrils and other orifices are open, and that the tendons in the decayed leg are visible, has not the slightest foundation. Why was this image made? Why hidden? and by whom? are questions which I must be excused from answering at present. HENRY

THE BELIEF OF THE ONONDAGA INDIANS–THE BODY OF AN INDIAN PROPHET.

To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal:– In your columns devoted to “Letters from the People,” I thought you would at this time publish the following, it being interesting as one of the current opinions of the Indians of “the Castle” regarding the wonderful “human petrified statue,” which, in its colossal proportions and the sphynx-like silence of its history is so electrifying and exciting the people.

By one of the old squaws I am told that a large number of Onondagas believe that the statue is the petrified body of a gigantic Indian prophet, who flourished many centuries ago, and who foretold the coming of the pale-faces, though long before the foot of our forefathers had touched the western continent. He warned his people with prophetic fervor of the coming encroachments of the white man, and the necessity of their abstinence from a poison drink he would bring to craze and destroy them. He told them that he should die and be buried out of their sight, but that THEIR DESCENDANT WOULD SEE HIM–AGAIN. J.P. FOSTER, State Agent and Teacher for the Onondaga Indians.

THE STONE GIANT.

On Saturday the sale of the remaining one-half interest in the Great Giant Wonder was closed up. Another partner, Mr. Wm. Spencer –an old-time schoolmate of Mr. Newell–was taken in, so that the present owners are Wm. C. Newell, of Cardiff, Alfred Higgins, Dr. Amos Westcott and Amos Gillett, of this city, David H. Hannurn, of Homer, and Wm. Spencer, of Utica.