A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY. 457 



sider the modern Indians as the lineal descendants of the mound- 

 builders, which is quite probable. Heretofore but three or four au- 

 thentic skulls of the mound-builders have been found in any sort of 

 preservation, while here we have a great many taken from a small 

 area. Further, if we are to refer the cemetery to the mound-build- 

 ing race, we must admit that the race disappeared within a very re- 

 cent period. On a level bank near the Little Miami River is a circular 

 excavation about forty feet in diameter and seven feet deep. " An 

 old settler relates that fifty years ago remains of stakes or palisades 

 could be seen surrounding this excavation." * These have since disap- 

 peared, but their being there shows within how recent a period the 

 ground was abandoned. Then the age of the forest-trees growing on 

 the ground argues against any very great antiquity. The largest trees 

 measured are a walnut fifteen and a half feet in circumference, an oak 

 twelve feet, an oak and a maple each nine and a half feet in circum- 

 ference, f equal to about five, four, and three feet in diameter respect- 

 ively. Now, the average growth of fourteen different species of trees 

 is about "12 of an inch a year, or one foot radius (two feet diameter) 

 in ninety-eight years. \ Taking this average, a tree five feet in diame- 

 ter would be two hundred and forty-five years old ; one four feet in 

 diameter, one hundred and ninety-six years old ; and one three feet in 

 diameter, one hundred and forty-seven years old ; or, in round num- 

 bers, two hundred and fifty, two hundred, and one hundred and fifty 

 years respectively. 



There is no evidence to show that there was any growth of forest 

 on this ground, after its abandonment by the former residents, previ- 

 ous to the one now covering it. The roots of living trees having 

 trunks two and three feet in diameter have been found penetrating 

 the crania of skeletons found here, a tolerably sure indication of a first 

 growth. Notwithstanding the assertions of many people to the con- 

 trary, the process of covering land with dense forest is by no means a 

 slow one. A field allowed to go without being cultivated becomes in 

 a few years covered with a new growth of saplings. Mr. Robert 

 Ridgway, in a late paper, after referring to the cutting off of timber, 

 and also to its encroachment on prairie-land in Illinois, says : " The 

 growth of this new forest is so rapid that extensive woods near Mount 

 Carmel [Illinois], consisting chiefly of oaks and hickories (averaging 

 more than eighty feet high, one to nearly two feet in diameter), were 

 open prairie within the memory of some of the present owners of the 

 land." * Taking this fact into consideration, and remembering that 



* " Prehistoric Monuments of the Little Miami Valley," by Dr. Charles Metz, 

 "Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History," vol. i, p. 123. 



f Ibid., vol. iii, p. 44. 



\ See table, by Dr. A. Lapham, of age of trees in Wisconsin, given in Foster's "Pre- 

 historic Races of the United States," p. 374. 



* " Notes on the Native Trees of the Lower Wabash and White River Valleys in 



