POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



285 



dred and eleven horses for forty days in one 

 spot. The absence of traditions about the 

 mound builders can not be regarded as evi- 

 dence of separate origin ; it is a fact that 

 the Winnebagoes and Menomonees have no 

 traditions going as far back as to Marquette, 

 or even to John Carver, not a century ago ; 

 and, in truth, their traditions are so short 

 that they deny that the Indians ever used 

 stone arrow-heads. The author concluded 

 that there was abundant evidence of an In- 

 dian origin in the mounds including the 

 finding of European implements in them 

 that must have been placed there when they 

 were made from the Gulf of Mexico to 

 Northern Wisconsin. 



Dr. IIoy also discussed the question of 

 the origin of the copper implements that are 

 found in the neighborhood of Lake Superior. 

 He remarked that the explorers of the St. 

 Lawrence, Lake Superior, and the Eastern 

 coast, all say that the Indians had these im- 

 plements, and that the copper-mines of Lake 

 Superior show no evidences of great an- 

 tiquity. The Chippewas and Winnebagoes 

 both have copper ornaments. Professor But- 

 ler has a copper spear-head, plowed up in 

 Wisconsin, containing part of an iron rivet, 

 which had doubtless been made or used 

 after the Indians had traded with the 

 whites, and had had access to iron. The 

 author was of the opinion that the Iudians 

 of the Lake Superior district made copper 

 implements for themselves, and also for ex- 

 tensive barter, and did not see how any rea- 

 sonable man could assert that the Indians 

 knew nothing about the use of the native 

 metal. Professor Putnam discussed the same 

 subject in his paper on the North American 

 copper implements and ornaments under his 

 charge in the Peabody Museum. He had 

 no doubt that the Indians used copper, and 

 that its use was contemporary with that of 

 polished stone implements. The native 

 copper was hammered, not molded, into 

 shape ; and the speaker described the way 

 iu which the processes were carried out. 

 Some ornaments that had been connected 

 with Christianity were really only shaped as 

 they were easiest to make. Some classic- 

 al-looking ear-rings were shown, which had 

 been made from native copper beaten 

 out. 



Formation of Prairies. Mr. H. D. Va- 



lin, of Chicago, has proposed a new theory 

 to account for the formation of prairies and 

 the elevation of the country west of the 

 Mississippi. Noticing that the prairies rest 

 generally on Silurian rocks, he believes that 

 they represent ground which has always 

 been inundated, or subject to periodical 

 overflows. The waters, when high, washed 

 away the rocks of the bluffs, and deposited 

 on the level surface beneath them the clay 

 resulting from the erosion ; while the de- 

 tritus forming the sod of the prairie dates 

 always from the last inundation. The con- 

 stant exposure of the prairie-soil to sub- 

 mersion accounts for the absence of trees. 

 The land has risen partly by deposition, but 

 in large part also because of the elasticity 

 of the earth's surface, " which, like matter 

 in general, always tends toward an equilib- 

 rium. For instance, the highest mountains 

 weigh about the same on the surface of the 

 earth that the deepest ocean does, other- 

 wise their respective levels would come into 

 one. Now, as the detritus of the rocks is 

 carried by streams into the sea, the porous 

 material grows heavier, though not increased 

 in size, and the equilibrium is forcibly re- 

 established by a slow upheaval of the land. 

 The pressure exerted laterally by such up- 

 heaval is, likely, the origin of volcanoes, 

 geysers, and earthquakes." 



Physiological Analogies of the Roman 



Letters. Professor A. Melville Bell, in ex- 

 plaining the system of " visible speech " at 

 the late meeting of the American Associa- 

 tion, remarked that something like a physi- 

 ological principle may be found to pervade 

 our Roman alphabet. The actions of the 

 lip3, the most obvious of the speech-organs, 

 would naturally be the most definitely in- 

 dicated ; and it is among the labial letters 

 that we find the most numerous illustrations 

 of an apparently physiological basis. The 

 rounded form of the lips in pronouncing 

 is, for example, very suggestive of the 

 circle, which is the emblem of that element; 

 and in the letter B we have a perfect rep- 

 resentation of the profile of the closed lips. 

 The letter P as compared with B, seems to 

 suggest a sound of similar organic produc- 

 tion, but lacking something of the B sound 

 and this is the exact physiological relation 



