REPORT OF THE SECRETARY 73 
mounds on Pecan Island in the lower part of Vermillion Parish. 
This part of Louisiana was occupied in historic times by the Atta- 
capa, a cannibalistic tribe of comparatively low culture. The build- 
ers of the Pecan Island mounds, however, were apparently not 
Attacapa but an earlier and more advanced people who made an 
excellent type of pottery and who were skilled workers in stone, 
shell, and bone. The presence in these Pecan Island mounds of 
native copper and galena, as well as slate and other kinds of stone 
not native to the section, indicates that at a very early date the 
Indians of lower Louisiana had trade relations with other tribes to 
the north and east. In addition to the cultural material collected, 
a number of undeformed skulls were obtained from Pecan Island, 
and these will be of particular value since skeletal material from 
Louisiana is scarce. 
Upon completion of the work in Louisiana in the latter part of 
June Mr. Collins proceeded to eastern Mississippi and located the 
sites of several of the historic Choctaw villages and secured physical 
measurements on 72 living Choctaw in the vicinity of Philadelphia, 
Miss. The latter phase of the work was in continuation of similar 
studies on the Choctaw begun in the summer of 1925, and was made 
possible by an appropriation from the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science. 
Dr. J. W. Gidley, assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology in 
the National Museum, was detailed to the bureau for a continuation 
of work begun in the summer in conjunction with Amherst College, 
in exploring the fossil beds in the vicinity of Melbourne and Vero, 
Fla., for fossil bones and possible human remains. Mr. C. Wythe 
Cook, of the United States Geological Survey, aided Doctor Gidley 
in a determination of the geologic formation of the bed. Most of 
the work of this expedition was to verify the geological observations 
of the previous expedition and to obtain if possible more evidence 
on the subject. More than 100 specimens of fossil bones were added 
to the collection and some new forms were represented, the most 
important of which were fossil remains of a large extinct jaguar 
and teeth of an extinct species of Termarctos, a genus of bear living 
now in South America and having never been found before in North 
America. Several Indian mounds were visited and examined, a 
survey was taken of the Grant Mound 14 miles south of Melbourne, 
and a plot made of the general structure of the shell heap, burial 
mound, and connecting ridges. Doctor Gidley also visited some 
mounds near Sarasota that had been reported to the bureau, but found 
that they had been dug into by curio hunters. He also examined the 
region at Lake Thonotosassa, 14 miles northeast of Tampa. Here he 
secured a few Indian artifacts that had been picked 'up by Mr. Samuel 
Conant. Mr. Conant also guided Doctor Gidley to an ancient work- 
