130 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



time. He said that the round towers and conical roofs 

 and the Boston bay windows seen to-day are patterned 

 after the ancient Roman house. The round towers were 

 so built as a means of better resisting the battering rams, 

 and the projecting windows for hurling missiles at the 

 besiegers. 



Monday Evening, March 21, 1898. — Regular meeting 

 in the Library room. Mr. C. J. H. Woodbury of Lynn 

 spoke on the " Floating Bridge on Salem Turnpike." This 

 paper is printed, with illustrations, in the Historical Col- 

 lections, Vol. xxxiv, page 67. 



Monday Evening, March 28, 1898. — Professor 

 Edward S. Morse, Director of the Peabcdy Academy 

 of Science, lectured this evening in Plummer Hall, on 

 the question "Are there evidences of Asiatic contact with 

 Central America ? " The speaker has examined the mounds 

 and shell-heaps both in Japan and in this country, and he 

 has occasionally found in these remote regions two pieces 

 of pottery resembling each other in perhaps one very 

 slight particular, but entirely different in every other 

 way. It is claimed that a small colony of Buddhist 

 monks came from China to Central America, but none of 

 the implements used by the Mongolians, such as chop 

 sticks, thumb rings, roofing tiles, wheeled vehicles, 

 ploughs, potter's wheels or stringed instruments of music 

 were found : no graves bearing any characteristic evi- 

 dence that any such emigration had ever taken place. 

 He said that the strong ocean currents running; from the 

 coast of Japan to the coast of North America had brought 

 Japanese junks to these shores (but no Chinese) as traces 

 of the wrecks had been found in ancient and modern 

 times. He also said that there were traces of resemblance 

 between the Japanese and the North American Indian 



