AMERICAN GEOLOGISTS AND NATURALISTS. 47 



JVIr. Lyell cited an instance where the inhabitants of Scandi- 

 navia, had taken advantage of a long and very high natural ridge, 

 to form three separate mounds, which were afterwards considered 

 as the burial places of their fabulous deities. 



Prof. Silliman remarked with respect to the genuineness of 

 mounds, as works of man, in contradistinction from those natural 

 piles that have been cut out of the strata of clay, sand, gi-avel, 

 loam, &c., and rounded and shaped by water so as to resemble 

 works of art — that artificial mounds (found in many and distant 

 countries, both on the eastern and western continent,) appear to 

 have been characteristic of a particular state of society, ad- 

 vanced beyond barbarism, but not yet sufficiently civilized for the 

 construction of massy sepulchres of solid stone, sarcophagi, pyr- 

 amids and temples. He appealed to those numerous mounds 

 which form the most impressive feature of the scenery on Salis- 

 bury plain in Wiltshire, in the southwest of England. Prof. S. 

 had counted seventy of these mounds in one view, while sitting 

 upon his horse upon the top of a low one ; and from the same 

 place Dr. Stukeley says that he enumerated one hundred and 

 twenty-eight. These mounds are rarely less than thirty feet in 

 diameter ; they are generally surrounded by a broad ditch, en- 

 closed by a circular or oblong parapet or embankment. Near 

 Overton in the west of England, Prof. S. ascended one which 

 was one hundred and seventy feet high and whose base covered 

 about an acre of ground, its form being that of the lower seg- 

 ment of a cone. 



The void, from which the earth was taken, remains to this day, 

 and is as evidently an artificial excavation to form an artificial 

 hill, as any modern fortification with its ditch and glacis. There 

 remains not the smallest doubt, that these mounds were erected 

 both as sepulchres for distinguished individuals, and as monu- 

 ments of victories. The remains of the dead have been often 

 found in them, either skeletons or ashes — with heads of spears, 

 swords, bones of horses, dogs and other domestic animals ; some- 

 times beads, trinkets, and female ornaments ; articles dear to the 

 departed while living, and which were believed to be important 

 to them in another world. 



Prof. H. D. Rogers remarked, in relation to Mr. Lyell's opin- 

 ion of the gradual rising of the North American terraces, that if 

 such were the case, fossil shells or marine sedimentary accumu- 

 lations should be found at all elevations uninterruptedly, on the 

 mountain slopes which are covered with marks of diluvial action. 

 It has not been shown by examination that such is the case ; 



