382 ANTHROPOLOGY. 



mg one acute and two obtuse angles, to suit the points to be broken. 

 This operation is very curious, both the holder and the striker singing, 

 and the strokes of the mallet being given exactly in time with the music, 

 with a sharp and rebounding blow, in which, the Indians tell us, is the 

 great medicine (or mystery) of the operation." 



MICA BEDS IN ALABAMA. 



By William Gesner, of Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama. 



In Clay County, township 19, range 7 east, section 26, in a corn-field 

 on the east bank of a small stream flowing into Gold Mine Branch, a 

 tributary to Talladega Creek, is a stone heap, many of the rocks from 

 which have been used in forming a retaining wall on the lower side of a 

 wagon-way into the Talladega and Ashland road. It is supposed by 

 the residents here to have been formed by the followers of De Soto to 

 mark the locality of an ancient excavation in one of the mica-bearing 

 beds of quartz and feldspar belonging to this neighborhood, and that 

 they obtained silver from it, and from others of like character. 



The geology of this region is Huronian, being constituted in this 

 immediate vicinity of gneissoid and mica slate, and hornblendic rocks. 

 This excavation is in a stratum of mica-bearing quartz and feldspar 

 exceeding 8 feet in thickness, and, judging from the apparent area given 

 to its entrance, the aborigines must have worked in it for a long time, 

 and without any of our appliances for quarrying, as no marks made 

 by metallic tools or pieces of them are found, though the place has been 

 searched time and again for silver, and latterly formica, affording sheets 

 of the latter (Muscovite) squaring from 1 to 10 inches, and in one in- 

 stance 11 by 14 inches. 



Southeasterly from this place about 300 yards, in the same range, 

 township, and section, occurs a smaller excavation in a similar micaceous 

 bed, trending parallel with the former, both of them being easily traced 

 on their outcrop for miles in a northeasterly and southeasterly direction, 

 with a dip of 62° toward the southeast. In Talladega County, township 

 20, range 0, section 12, there is another one of these excavations of as 

 Large dimensions as the first mentioned, and in a similar bed of mica- 

 bearing quartz and feldspar, from both of which it is evident the 

 aborigines obtained large quantities of mica. 



ll is observable in these three instances that these beds were attacked 

 by them at their outcrops on the banks of streams, where denudation 

 had revealed them, and that the entries were made on them in the most 

 simple manner. 



