94 Editorial Miscellany. 



pecially when considered in connection with the practice of burial, of 

 which mention has heen made. 



— The Missouri Mound.— Since going to press, we have received 

 from Dr. S. H Headlee, of St. James, Missouri, an interesting letter 

 concerning the mound near Springfield, described in the paper on 

 "Sacrificial Mounds" in the foregoing pages of this issue, from which 

 we extract the following : 



"The mound you speak of is located in Greene county, in this 

 State, about 12 or 14 miles north of Springfield. It is about 37° 20' 

 north latitude, and 16° west from Washington City. According to 

 the local survey of the State, it is in Kange 22, Town. 31. It is sixty 

 feet high, its diameter at the base is 350 feet; at the top 130 feet. 

 It is surrounded by a trench (except about 20 feet at the north), about 

 200 feet wide and 4 feet deep. How much this may have filled in the 

 past is hard to determine. On the north-west there is a deeper ex- 

 cavation, about 200 feet across, and 6 or 7 feet deep. These trenches 

 are where the materials came from to build the mound, as the rock 

 and clay in the mound are the same as those that compose the top of 

 the hill on which it is situated. The north side has an easy approach, 

 with a great many large loose rock, which may have composed a stair 

 way, but of this I am not positive. There are a great many rock in 

 the mound, but whether they are put in regular layers or not, is hard 

 to determine from an external survey. Some of them, especially to- 

 ward the top, seem to be in layers ; others appear to be loose. The 

 rock is a vermicular sandstone. In the deep cut on the north-west 

 corner are found numerous fossils, such as I have not been able to 

 discover in any of the geological formations near. The formation ^ 

 near, in which there are any fossils, is the lower carboniferous, and 

 all the specimens obtained have been either carbonate of lime or a 

 silicate, but these are seemingly an oxide of iron. The inference is, 

 that they have been brought there and left by the Mound-Builders or 

 the worshipers that came after them, as this is evidently a sacri- 

 ficial mound. 



This mound is on the highest point on the highest hill, in a very 

 hilly country, and which rises some three hundred feet above the 

 valleys by which it is surrounded. It is situated in a rough, broken 

 region, with plenty of water and timber around and near, but very 

 little tillable land nearer than five miles. It is the only work of its 

 kind in all the south-western portion of the State so far as I have any 

 information. When my father settled in that country, forty years ago, 

 the few remaining Indians could give no account of the mound or its 

 builders; and it evidently does not belong to the present race of 



