most varied purposes, and the occupation of the country by Indian tribes down to comparatively recent times, is the obvious cause of the extreme abundance of stone weapons and implements all over the country. As indications of this abundance, the case of Dr. Abbott's farm at Trenton, New Jersey, may be mentioned. This gentleman has obtained, on a very limited area, about twenty thousand stone implements and several hundreds of associated objects made of bone, clay, and copper, besides numerous pipes and carved stone ornaments. In a small field on the banks of the Potomac, near Washington, arrow-heads of quartz and quartzite have been collected for many years, and are sometimes still so abundant that hundreds may be found in a few days. This is on the site of an Indian settlement abandoned about two hundred years ago. In California, the large stone mortars used for pounding the acorns, which seem always to have formed the food of the indigenes, are scattered over the country by thousands; while the beautiful little arrow-heads of jasper and chalcedony found abundantly in some districts, are systematically collected to be set in gold and used as ornamental jewellery.

Next in interest and extent to the stone weapons and implements are the articles of pottery found abundantly in the various classes of mounds and sites of villages. These consist chiefly of cooking vessels, water jars, drinking cups, and mortuary urns, extremely varied in forın, size, and ornamentation, and often exhibiting a considerable amount of artistic skill. In a group of mounds in New Madrid, in Missouri, over a hundred such vessels were found, exhibiting about thirty distinct types of form, from flat dishes to long-necked jars, vessels with or without handles or feet, and with the handles greatly varied in number, form, and position. Many of these are moulded above into the form of human heads or busts, and some of them are in strange attitudes, recalling the fantastic Peruvian pottery. Similar pottery has been found in the mounds of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, as well as in the curious stone graves found extensively in the Southern States; but their various peculiarities can only be understood by examining the specimens or a good series of figures. Very numerous tools and utensils of shell have also been found in the mounds, a moderate quantity in copper, with many ornaments of mica and some of silver and of gold.

Ancient Mounds and Earthworks.

The general character of the mounds and earthworks of various parts of the United States, and which are more especially abundant in the great valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries, is sufficiently known, though their vast numbers and the great variety of form and structure which they present is hardly understood in England. A voluminous memoir will shortly be published by the Bureau of Ethnology, which will give most important information on the entire subject. In some parts of Indiana and Kentucky a hundred mounds have been found in a hundred acres. The enclosed area of the ancient earthworks at Aztalan, Wisconsin, is more than fourteen hundred feet long and near seven hundred wide. The great mound of Cahokia, St. Louis, was ninety feet high, and covered an area of seven hundred feet by five hundred feet, with an inclined road up one side to reach the flat platform on the top. Another almost equally large mound exists at Seltzertown, Mississippi. In Louisiana are some curious platform mounds, in the form of squares or parallelograms, connected by terraces. Besides the wonderful Fort Ancient in Ohio, containing five miles of embankment, now, sad to relate, being gradually destroyed by cultivation, there are in Georgia and other southern states several fortified mountain-tops, recalling, in their inaccessibility, the hill-forts of India.

Ash-pits, Cemeteries and House sites.

Another curious class of works are the ash-pits, discovered a few years since near Madisonville, Ohio. Mr. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum, has opened no less than one thousand of these pits, and has obtained from them a large amount of implements, ornaments, pot

tery, and other articles. They are found on a plateau which is covered with a remnant of the virgin forest. There is a surface deposit of twelve to eighteen inches of leaf-mould, below which is hard clay. These pits are found to be circular in form, from three to four feet in diameter, and from four to seven feet deep. At the bottom there is often a small circular excavation, either in the centre or at one side. They are usually filled with ashes, in more or less defined layers, the bottom portion being very fine grey ashes, while the upper be more r part may or less mixed with gravel or sand, with occasianal layers of charcoal. Throughout the whole mass of ashes and sand, from the top of the pit to the bottom, are bones of fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Those of the larger species of mammalia, such as the elk, deer, and bear, are generally broken, and appear to have been those of animals used for food. Half a bushel of such bones are sometimes taken out of one pit. Shells of many species of Unio are also found. There is also much broken pottery, but rarely any entire vessels. Numbers of implements of bone or horn are found, some of large size and apparently used for digging, as well as awls, beads, harpoon points, and small whistles. Arrow points, drills, scrapers, and other stone instruments are common, with some polished celts and rough hammer-heads. Stone pipes and copper beads and finger-rings are also found. In some of the pits a considerable quantity of charred corn has been found, together with nuts and other articles of food, and in one case only a human skeleton was found at the bottom of a pit. A considerable area, including that occupied by the pits, seems to have been used as a cemetery, both before and since they were constructed. A great number of skeletons are found buried just beneath the layer of leaf mould, and in some cases these skeletons lie across a pit, while in others skeletons already buried have been evidently disturbed by digging the pit.

In the same district, but at a little higher elevation, are a number of earth-circles, from forty-three to fiftyeight feet in diameter, which prove to be sites of houses, with a central fire-place of clay, and with implements and utensils agreeing with those found in the pits. After an extensive and most laborious investigation of this locality, the only explanation of the peculiar feature of the pits is, that at certain times or on certain special occasions the whole contents of a house were burned, and the remains and all the ashes buried in a pit, while the quantity of bones found indicates that the ceremony was accompanied by feasting. The thick layer of leaf-mould covering the pits, graves, and house-sites would indicate an antiquity much greater than that of the large foresttrees which grow on the present surface, while the enormous number of the pits and the extent of the cemetery, covering over fifteen acres of ground and from which over five hundred skeletons have been obtained, indicates that the place was permanently occupied by a large population.

American Shell-banks.

Another class of remains, the shell-banks, are far more numerous and extensive than the kitchen-middens of Europe. They are found from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west coast they have been discovered in Alaska and in California, while similar mounds, composed entirely of fresh-water shells, occur in the valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio, and other rivers. These accumulations are often of great extent. One on the coast of Georgia covers ten acres to a depth of from five to ten feet. In Florida, on Amelia Island, a shell-heap extends a quarter of a mile inland by a hundred and fifty yards along the shore; and many others are found thickly scattered over a district a hundred and fifty miles long. An immense number of works of art and animal and human remains have been found in them, some of which indicate a considerable antiquity.

Cave-dwellings.

America also has its cave dwellings, with characteristic remains of their human inhabitants; its cliff-houses, forts, and towns, partly excavated and partly built up with good stone walls, so as to resemble mediæval castles or eastern rock-cities; and its ruined towns of the Zuni and Pueblo Indians scattered over the vast desert-regions of Arizona and New Mexico. Some of these are highly interesting and remarkable. The ruined pueblo of Penasca Blanca in the Chaga Cañon, New Mexico, forms a regular oval of about five hundred by four hundred feet, the houses being symmetrically placed around the outside so as to enclose an open area, which contains a depression, probably a pond for storing water. The walls of the houses are regularly and solidly built of stone. Equally remarkable is a large round tower about forty feet in diameter with double walls, the space between which is divided into numerous small rooms. This is in ruins, but was evidently well constructed of good stone masonry. Accurate models of these and many other structures exist in the National and Smithsonian Museums.

The preceding brief outline of the materials which exist in American Museums for the study of prehistoric man are sufficient to show that they are not inferior in extent, variety, and interest to those of Europe; while if we extend our survey to the marvellous prehistoric remains of Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Bolivia, their pyramids and temples, their ruined cities, their cemeteries, their highways and aqueducts, their highly characteristic sculpture, their fantastic pottery, and their still undeciphered hieroglyphics, we may claim for the American continent a position, as regards the early history and development of the human race, hardly inferior to that of the whole of the Eastern hemisphere. A body of earnest and painstaking students are now engaged in the collection, preservation, and study of these various classes of remains; and at the same time a vast mass of most valuable material is being brought together relating to the manners and customs, the tools, weapons, and ornaments, the tribal relations, the migrations, the folk-lore, the religions, and the languages of the aboriginal inhabitants. Already much light has been thrown on the prehistoric remains by their comparison with objects still