454 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Dec. 



which might fairly be read '• gold, and wampum shells, and flints 

 or implements" — the three great treasures of aboriginal man. 

 In the collections before you there are several forms of these 

 ornaments. Some are spiral shells, with a hole ground in one side. 

 Such beads are common to various parts of Europe and America, 

 and they constituted the wampum of several tribes of this country. 

 Others are laboriously ground out of larger shells. Some on our 

 tables, from Newfoundland, are made of the large Mactra soUdis- 

 sinia Others from NewBrunswick are made of the white and blue 

 portions of the coast wampum shell, the Venus mercenarUi] and 

 one from the old Hochelaga, an ornament of some dusky belle of 

 Montreal three or four hundred years ago, is made of the hinge of 

 a fresh-water mussel. Others from the same site are discs of clay, 

 crimped on the edges, and burned in [the fire. Others, from 

 Ontario, have been hammered out of native copper. A string 

 from Brockville presents a curious example of the transmission of 

 objects of value from place to place, and of the way in which even 

 rude peoples make distant regions tributary to their tastes. It 

 consists partly of copper beads from Lake Superior, and partly of 

 shells of Purpura lapiUus from the Atlantic coast, localities 

 which must have been the very ends of the earth to the chief who 

 possessed these precious ornaments. Some beads from the 

 river Tobique, New Brunswick, in one of our cases, were taken 

 from the grave of an Indian child, buried in those forest solitudes 

 by some bereaved mother, who expressed her grief, and perhaps her 

 hopes and fears as to the welfare of her darling in the spirit land, 

 by winding around its little corpse her precious strings of wampum, 

 which, to her simple faith, had, perhaps, some value even on that 

 unknown shore. Her gift was not wholly in vain. It reminds us 

 to-night of that light of nature by which the invisible things of 

 God and of a future life are manifested even to the rude children 

 of the forest; of the future tribunal before which we and the poor 

 Indian must alike stand, to be judged according to that which 

 was given to us ; and of those common afi'ections and hopes and 

 fears, which prove the kinship of man in all times and conditions. 

 But I shall not turn this address of welcome into a lecture ; and 

 I must now invite you to inspect for yourselves the treasures 

 which we have collected, and some of the more minute of which 

 Dr. Edwards has kindlv consented to exhibit with the lime-light. 

 I may also commend to your attention the objects which the 

 members of the Microscopic Club are prepared to exhibit in the 



