PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 787 



fix the location of all the mouucls aud remains in the State of which 

 I could learn, in the hope that others with more leisure at their disposal 

 and better fitted by anatomical knowledge might be aided in their 

 search by these descriptions. If in this I have succeeded, I shall feel 

 that my labor has not been in vain. There are numerous mounds and 

 shell heaps on the western coast of the State that I have been unable- 

 to visit. Many of them will be found described in the recent Eeports of 

 the Smithsonian Institution. In regard to the race or tribe who have 

 left these monuments, it appears to me most probable the kjokkenmod- 

 dings were the work of successive races or generations of Indians, and 

 incidentally formed by the slow process of accumulation naturally 

 coincident to prolonged residence on one particular spot, and the bulky 

 and imperishable nature of the remains of the shell-fish upon which 

 they principally subsisted, this residence being chosen and maintained 

 as most eligible, and in many places the only dry location available 

 throughout the year. These kjokkenmoddings are now generally the 

 most desirable places of residence to be found in the adjoining country, 

 and they and the immediate vicinity are commonly occupied by the 

 present settlers. The reason for the formation of the shell heaps is 

 more obscure. Some intelligent persons, however, with whom I have 

 conversed are of the opinion that they both have been modified by the 

 action of water since their formation, the stratified appearance of some 

 of them and their immense extent lending a shadow of plausibility to* 

 this supposition. If this should be the case it would define an age for 

 these remains far earlier than has generally been supposed. The gen- 

 eral absence of stone or flint implements would seem at first sight to- 

 favor this hypothesis and carry the age of these remains back to the 

 earliest advent of man in the Palaeolithic age. I think, however, from 

 my somewhat extended observations in this and other States that the 

 theory of a submergence since the original formation of the shell heaps 

 cannot be maintained. 



We find the same appearance of stratiti cation in the small shell heaps 

 in Ipswich, Mass., examined and mapped by me in 1873 for the Pea- 

 body Museum, which are of comparatively modern date, and it is easy 

 to see that this stratification could have been formed in the gradual ac- 

 cumulation of the heaps, occupied probably, at irregular intervals, by 

 the wandering tribes. It is known that the Ipswich shell heaps have 

 never been covered by flood. In all the remains that I examined in. 

 Florida I could find no evidence of a superimposed stratum of material 

 foreign to the heap, except such as resulted from an accumulation of 

 vegetable humus, or was caused by the action of the wind transporting^ 

 loose sand, and by the action of the river waters at their several stages 

 or such higher stages as periodically occur. I have, then, unhesitatingly 

 assumed the remains to belong to the Neolithic age, and account, in a 

 great measure, for the absence of flint and stone implements by the al- 

 most entire absence of material from which to construct them in the 

 regions examined. The natives undoubtedly possessed some of these 



