[From the Proceodings of the California Academy of Scieuces, March 4, 1872.] 



Remarks on Pre-Historic Remains in Florida. 



BY ROBERT E. C. STEARNS. 



Mr. Stearns briefly alluded to liis examination and researches, in 

 the year 1869, of the mounds and shell heaps at Point Penallis, 

 Tampa Bay, Florida, near the supposed landing-place of the expe- 

 dition of De Soto. 



These mounds are of two kinds ; the mounds proper, being formed 

 of earth, and used for burial and perhaps other purposes, and the 

 others, formed of the shells of mollusks ; the latter should, for the 

 sake of distinction and propriety, be called shell-heaps ; they are 

 composed of irregularly-alternating, thick strata of shells, and thin 

 strata of ashes; these alternations were owing to a periodicity 

 in the visits of the Indians to the places where these heaps 

 were formed, the selection of a site for a heap being dependent 

 upon the abundance of moUusca of the species considered edible by 

 the Indians, in the adjacent waters ; and after the stock of food in 

 the locality was exhausted, it would be left, and the party would 

 remove to another. During the interim between these visits, 

 vegetation, in the form of rank grasses and vines, which are of rapid 

 growth in that country, soon covered the deserted spot ; and in the 

 course of several months or a few years, as the case might be, 

 when the locality was again visited, the surface of the heap was 

 burned over, and this being repeated, in the course of years the 

 shell-heaps assumed the form and character in which we find them, 

 and upon being cut through present the appearance of a more or 

 less regular stratification. 



The shells found in these heaps are of the same species as are 

 now found living in the neighboring waters ; they consist princi- 

 pally of the oysters (Ostrcea Virginica), conchs {Busi/con perver- 

 sum and Melo7igena corona)^ scallops {Pecteri dislocatus') , and 

 other less common forms. 



In the earth or burial mounds, which are of more regular shape 

 and of less size generally than the shell-heaps, were found human 



