702 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on " Shooting." He could not do it, because 

 he could not work up ideas that were not of 

 his own originating ; but the thought was the 

 seed of "The Badminton Library." The 

 character of his later books is correctly 

 described by Mr. Besant when he says that 

 in them " the whole of the country life of 

 the nineteenth century will be found dis- 

 played down to every detail. The life of the 

 farmer is there ; the life of the laborer ; the 

 life of the gamekeeper; the life of the 

 women who work in the fields and of those 

 who work at home. He revealed Nature in 

 her works and ways ; the flowers and the 

 fields ; the wild English creatures ; the hedges 

 and the streams; the wood and the coppice. 

 He told what may be seen .everywhere by 

 those who have eyes to see," and he began 

 " to write down the response of the soul to 

 the phenomena of Nature, to interpret the 

 voice of Nature speaking to the soul. ... He 

 draws as no other writer has done the actual 

 life of rural England under Queen Victoria." 

 The secret of the perfect execution of these 

 works is found in examining the note-books 

 which he habitually kept, recording daily ob- 

 servations and phenomena, a few specimens 

 of which are printed, and the reading of 

 which " is like reading an unclassified index 

 to the works of Nature." Jefferies was dis- 

 abled by illness during the last five years 

 and a half of his life, and had to work by 

 the hands of others. Yet some of his best 

 essays were produced during this time. 

 Among them were " The Red Deer," a mi- 

 nute account of the natural history, etc., of 

 these animals, to observe which he had gone 

 all over Exmoor on foot ; and the essay en- 

 titled " The Pageant of Summer," in which 

 he reached his highest point, but which 

 "was written while he was in deadly pain 

 and torture." He died poor, and a sub- 

 scription was taken among the admirers of 

 his writings to place his family in a com- 

 fortable position. 



BURIAI-MODNDS OF THE NORTHERN SECTIONS 



OF THF, United States. By Cyrus Thom- 

 as, Ph. D. Washington : Bureau of Eth- 

 nology. Pp. 119. 



This monograph is an advance extract 

 from the fifth annual report of the Bureau of 

 Ethnology. It deals with the burial-mounds 

 of the Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, and Appa- 

 lachian districts, which areas are regarded 



as having been occupied by different tribes. 

 The effigy-mounds form the distinguishing 

 feature of the Wisconsin district. The 

 works of the Illinois region are mostly 

 small conical tumuli, containing rude stone 

 or wooden vaults, and further characterized 

 by the scarcity of pottery vessels, the fre- 

 quent occurrence of pipes, the presence of 

 copper axes, etc. Among the peculiar feat- 

 ures of the works in the Ohio district are 

 the gi-eat circles and squares of the inclos- 

 ures, the long parallel earthen walls, the 

 so-called altars within the mounds, and the 

 numerous carved stone pipes. The mounds 

 of the Appalachian district resemble those 

 of the last-named area, in containing altar- 

 like structures and numerous stone pipes. 

 The peculiar features are the mode of burial, 

 the absence of pottery, and the numerous pol- 

 ished celts and engraved shells found in the 

 mounds. The other regions mentioned but 

 not treated in this monograph are the New 

 York, middle Mississippi, lower Mississippi, 

 and Gulf districts. This districting, how- 

 ever, is put forward as a working hypothesis 

 rather than as an established arrangement. 

 Prof. Thomas gives brief descriptions of the 

 leading types found in the different northern 

 districts mentioned, confining himself chiefly 

 to the explorations made by the bureau as- 

 sistants. These accounts are illustrated with 

 forty-nine cuts and six plates. He concludes, 

 from the results of these explorations, that 

 each of the tribes inhabiting one of these 

 northern districts had several modes of bu- 

 rial, differing with the social position of the 

 deceased ; that the custom of removing the 

 flesh before the final burial was quite gen- 

 eral, the bones of the common people being 

 often gathered into heaps over which mounds 

 were built ; that usually some religious cere- 

 mony in which fire played a part was per- 

 formed at the burial, but that there is no 

 evidence of human sacrifice ; that nothing 

 in the character or contents of the mounds 

 indicates that their builders had reached a 

 higher culture status than thai in which 

 some of the Indian tribes were found at the 

 coming of the Europeans ; that the begin- 

 ning of the mound-building age does not 

 antedate the fifth or sixth century ; and that 

 the custom of erecting mounds over the 

 dead continued in some localities into post- 

 Columbian times. 



