•Cushiug.] 44o [Xov. 6, 1896. 



Key Marco, only tray-shaped vessels, aad either shallow, or hemispheri- 

 ■cal and deep, sooty, cooking-, or heating-bowls of black earthenware, 

 were found. Nearly all, as was to be expected, were crushed ; yet 

 from among the numerous sherds carefully saved in lots, Mr. Bergmann 

 and I have succeeded in bringing together the parts of not fewer than 

 fifteen examples, of various sizes ; and we hope to restore yet others. 

 One small, shallow bowl, a fragment of which I exhibited to the Society, 

 has happily been almost completely restored. It contains a quite 

 thick mass of black rubber gum — intermixed with crushed shell and 

 other substance — of precisely the kind that was used for cement and 

 paint material as described in the text. Other and larger examples con- 

 tain almost equally thick coatings of partly charred food, inside, and 

 like all the rest, incrustations of soot, outside. 



No relics found by us in the muck so completely evidenced the use of 

 the water courts in which the deposits occurred, as places of actual 

 residence, as did these fire-vessels. 



Only a single ornamental fragment was found. This was the conven- 

 tional figurehead of a crested bird, quite such as is found on many of 

 the traylike bowls of earthenware from the ancient mounds of the 

 Mississippi valley. But it had been drilled and reshaped, to some ex- 

 tent, to serve as a weight or pendant. On the contiguous heights, how- 

 ever, and on the heights of nearly all the keys, especially towards the 

 North, I collected many examples of more elaborate, more decorative 

 and varied potter3% much of it so distinct, in truth, from the potterj' of 

 the muck, that I was somewhat puzzled to explain it as the work of the 

 same people, at least in the same period of their development ; and, 

 indeed, it may be that in part this pottery of the heights is later, and 

 even perliaps represents to some degree the work of later peoples. 



I can only add here more deliberately than was possible, of course, in 

 my spoken address, an expression of my continued appreciation of the 

 kindly comments with which Dr. Brinton favored me, and with which 

 Dr. Putnam both opened and closed his discussion,] 



