THE STONE AGE IN NOVA SCOTIA.—PATTERSON. 239 
of lakes. Such places will now be found so overgrown with 
trees and bushes that no traces of their occupancy will be dis- 
cernable. But along the rivers when the land is cleared stone 
implements are picked up at various points. Thus I have 
obtained them on the St. Mary’s River, near the Forks, and on 
both the East and West Branches. On the Roseway River, 
about fourteen miles from Shelburne, the stream divides form- 
ing an island, on which have been found a number of implements, 
principally goudges. I have seen a number, some of them rather 
singular, which were gathered on the Musquodoboit; and I 
have heard of a place on the Shubenacadie, not far below the 
railway station, which has yielded a number of such articles. 
But except at such chosen spots as those I have mentioned near 
the embouchures of the Lequille and St. Mary’s Rivers, so far as 
I have observed, the relics found in the interior have not been 
in such quantities as to indicate continued occupancy. 
The kitchen middens on the sea coast are in most cases easily 
distinguishable by the quantity of shells which they contain. 
Up the rivers they are usually known only by finding implements 
on the stone chips left in the formation of arrow heads. Even 
of that which I have mentioned on the Lequille River, though 
Mr. Hoyt has picked up on about three-quarters of an acre of 
ground between fifty and a hundred implements, yet the soil does 
not differ in appearance from that around, though its present 
occupiers notice a greater fertility in it which is retained through 
successive croppings. But on such places on the coast we will 
generally find on the surface a distinct layer, varying from two 
or three inches to fifteen or twenty inches in depth, composed 
sometimes almost entirely of shells of edible mollusks but gen- 
ally mixed with soil formed by the decay of the other refuse from 
their camps. In no place that I have seen does there appear any 
thing like the quantities, shown in other countries, where accumu- 
lations almost entirely of shells to the depth of two, three or even 
more feet, will be found extending over acres of ground. What 
I have seen might more properly be called refuse heaps, of 
which shells fornied an important part, and they covered but 
very limited areas, the largest not exceeding three-quarters of an 
