xxiv Trans. Acad. Set. of St. Louis. 



An invitation for the Academy to be represented at the fifth 

 International Congress of Zoology, to be held in Berlin, 

 August 12-16, 1901, was presented and referred to the Coun- 

 cil [which subsequently designated Mr. Julius Hurter as the 

 representative of the Academy at the Congress] . 



The Corresponding Secretary read a communication from 

 Dr. Amos Sawyer, entitled Ethnographic life lines left by 

 a prehistoric race, the paper being illustrated by sketches, 

 fragmentary human remains, and stones believed by him to be 

 stone implements, but not necessarily such, derived from a 

 prehistoric grave examined some ten miles southwest of Hills- 

 boro, Illinois, on the west side of Shoal Creek. In one in- 

 stance it was stated that a grave consisting of six large slabs 

 of limestone contained six skeletons, their thighs flexed upon 

 the abdomen, the legs upon the thighs, their arms placed by 

 their sides and their heads at either end of the inclosing box 

 and facing east and west. From the limited capacity of the 

 slab-inclosed graves, the writer inferred that the remains had 

 been placed in them after skeletonization, as there was not 

 sufficient room for the number of bodies found unless the 

 muscles had been removed, and it was argued from this that 

 the remains were those of men prominent in the nation. 



The Corresponding Secretary read a further communication 

 from Dr. Sawyer, referring to a piece of wood found at a 

 depth of 400 feet below the surface, in sinking a shaft for a 

 coal mine. The specimen was said to have occurred in a ten- 

 foot layer of loam filled with the debris of a forest, and the 

 specimen submitted, like others, had been flattened by pres- 

 sure . 



In the discussion of these communications, Mr. Colton 

 Russell stated that west of St. Louis, in a number of so-called 

 Indian graves which he had examined, the encasing with 

 rough limestone slabs, mentioned by Dr Sawyer, had been 

 observed, and Dr. Trelease called attention to the fact that 

 the specimen of wood exhibited, which did not seem to be 

 petrified, belonged to post-glacial times and was perhaps 

 comparable with certain pieces of wood, supposed to be cedar, 

 but not yet carefully studied, which Mr. Hermann, the Sewer 

 Commissioner of St. Louis, had found in company with 



