ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 217 



The artificial deposits of shells attracted the attention of the Swedish travel- 

 er, Professor Peter Kalm, who arrived in North America in 1748, and he makes 

 repeated mention of them.* " Some Englishmen,^^ he states, " asserted that near 

 the river Potomack, in Virginia, a great quantity of oyster-shells were to be met 

 with, and that they themselves had seen whole mountains of them. The place 

 where they are found is said to be about two English miles distant from the sea- 

 shore. The proprietor of that ground burns lime out of them. This stratum of 

 oyster-shells is two fathom and more deep. Such quantities of shells have 

 likewise been found in other places, especially in New York, on digging in the 

 ground ; and in one place, at the distance of some English miles from the sea, a 

 vast quantity of oyster-shells and of other shells was found. Some people con- 

 jectured that the natives had formerly lived in that j^lace, and had left the shells 

 of the oysters which they had consumed in such great heaps. But others could 

 not conceive how it happened that they were thrown in such immense quantities 

 all into one place. "f This shows at least that the origin of North American 

 shell-heaps was a matter of speculation more than a century ago. 



Professor Kalm also draws attention to the existence of deposits of fluviatile 

 shells, which indicate the places where the aborigines feasted on fresh-water 

 mollusks. In one of his notes, dated Raccoon, New Jersey, March 2, 1749, he 

 says: — ^^ M^tilus anatinus, a kind of muscle-shells, was found abundantly in 

 little furrows, which crossed the meadows. The shells were frequently covered 

 on the outside with a thin crust of particles of iron, when the water in the fur- 

 rows came from an iron mine. The Englishmen and Swedes settled here seldom 

 make any use of these shells ; but the Indians who formerly lived here broiled 

 them and eat the flesh. Some of the Europeans eat them sometimes."! 



According to Dr. D. Gr. Brinton, the artificial character of many of these 

 deposits was first brought prominently before the scientific public by Mr. Lard- 

 ner Vanuxem, in the " Proceedings of the American Association of Geologists 

 and Naturalists " for 1840-42 (page 21, etc ). I have not seen his article, which, 

 as Dr. Brinton states, refers to shell-heaps on the shores of the Chesapeake and 

 its aifluent streams, on the Jersey shore, and Long Island. § 



During his second visit to the United States Sir Charles Lyell observed 

 shell-accumulations on the coasts of Massachusetts and Georgia, notably on Saint 

 Simon's Island, near the mouth of the Altamaha River. His account of what 

 he saw on that island is so concise and characteristic that I cannot refrain from 

 quoting it in this place : — 



* His notice of shell-deposits in the neighborhood of New York is given in the " Extracts." 

 t Kalm : Travels into North America; translated by John Reinhold Forster ; London, 1772; Vol. I, p. 76. 

 J Ibid.; Vol. I, p. 374.— The place formerly called Raccoon is now Swedesborough in Gloucester County. 

 § Brinton: Artificial Shell-Deposits of the United States ; Smithsonian Report for 1866 ; p. 356. 



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