ARCHAEOLOGY. 



one of bone and one of chipped stone ; bear's 

 teeth, some showing perforations and some 

 containing insertions of pearl; breast-orna- 

 ments and ear-ornaments of copper ; and parts 

 of human skeletons. Some new objects hav- 

 ing been discovered in one of the mounds in 

 the Scioto Valley, near Chillicothe, a brief ex- 

 amination was made of that site. Among the 

 specimens obtained there were two copper celts, 

 some copper plates, and several copper ear- 

 ornaments, some of which were covered with 

 meteoric iron like a few of those in the Turner 

 mounds, and a celt made of meteoric iron. 

 These discoveries are regarded as furnishing 

 an important link connecting tbe people who 

 built the earthworks in the Scioto Valley with 

 the builders of the group on the Turner farm 

 in the Little Miami Valley. A large cemetery 

 was explored on the opposite side of the Little 

 Miami river from the ancient cemetery, near 

 Madisonville, which had already been ex- 

 plored, and from it were obtained many thou- 

 sand specimens and several skeletons. Among 

 the specimens were large pipes cut in stone in 

 the form of human figures, examples of which 

 had hitherto only been found on the surface, 

 now for the first time met associated with 

 skeletons. These pipes had been attributed to 

 the people who made the mounds in the Ohio 

 Valley, but, the curator says, " now we know 

 that they belonged to a people who buried in 

 regular and large cemeteries, where the bodies 

 were generally placed in extended postures. 

 We also," the report continues, "have ob- 

 tained facts indicating burial ceremonies, 

 which, with the many objects associated with 

 the human remains, will permit us to draw a 

 fair picture of the arts and customs of this 

 particular people, who need no longer be con- 

 founded with those who built the altar-mounds, 

 stratified mounds, and large earthworks in the 

 valley." An examination was made of some 

 mounds on the bluffs of the Mississippi river, 

 in Atlas township, Pike county, 111., and also 

 of some mounds in Calhoun county, along the 

 bluffs of the Illinois. The most important re- 

 sult of this work was, in its leading to the 

 formation of an opinion that the mounds on 

 the Illinois bluffs were not made by the same 

 people who built those on the Mississippi bluffs 

 in Pike county. "In the latter, few if any 

 objects of an imperishable character were 

 placed with the dead. In the former have 

 been found pottery of an exceptionally fine 

 character ; elaborate ornaments of shell, stone, 

 and copper; pearl, shell, and copper beads; 

 and implements made of bone, stone, and 

 copper. From all I can learn of the burial- 

 mounds of the Illinois bluffs, 1 ' says Mr. Put- 

 nam, the curator of the museum, " they 

 resemble in contents, size, and structure the 

 simple burial-mounds of the Ohio Valley, 

 while those on the Mississippi bluffs have noth- 

 ing in common with them except that they are 

 burial-mounds." Dr. C. 0. Abbott, in his ex- 

 aminations of the gravels at Trenton, N. J., 



besides recovering several interesting paleo- 

 lithic implements from various depths, found 

 a part of a human under jaw sixteen feet be- 

 low the surface, not far from where a piece of 

 the tusk of a mastodon or mammoth had been 

 found several years previously. The museum 

 has received from Dr. Flint, in Nicaragua, four 

 blocks of tufa containing human footprints, 

 which had been found under several layers of 

 volcanic material, on the shores of Lake Mena- 

 gua, in that country. Dr. Flint had also fur- 

 nished the museum with a number of orna- 

 ments in jade, one of which, when compared 

 with a cup of the same mineral from Pekin, 

 in China, proved to be like it in color, hard- 

 ness, and specific gravity. No place is known 

 where jade is found or has been found in situ, 

 except in China ; and the distribution of orna- 

 ments of that mineral in prehistoric sites all 

 over the world is held, in the absence of evi- 

 dence to make any other supposition plausible, 

 to imply that some kind of intercourse existed 

 in the age to which the remains belong. Some 

 of the ornaments in question had been made 

 from celts by cutting them into halves and quar- 

 ters, and still exhibited parts of the cutting 

 edge of the original implement. This implies, 

 at least, that the supply of jade was not abun- 

 dant, else the ornaments would have been 

 made from fresh stones, and not by cutting up 

 tools which already had considerable value. 



Animal-Mounds in Wisconsin. Dr. Stephen D. 

 Peet, of Wisconsin, has made a study of the 

 prehistoric earthworks around Delavan Lake, 

 and calls attention to the fact that the ridges 

 at Lake Lawn, which have not been observed 

 to have any particular form, really conceal a 

 variety of symmetrical figures. The plotting 

 of them, he says, has revealed tbe fact that 

 they are in the shape of birds, turtles, and 

 other creatures, and that many of them were 

 originally very accurate imitations. He has 

 discovered at least ten bird effigies in this one 

 group; but there are several effigies which 

 have been obliterated. Thirty-seven of these 

 forms are here found within the space of ten 

 acres, and so close together as to make the 

 ground extremely rough. The size of the 

 mounds varies from fifty to a hundred and 

 fifty feet in length, and from thirty to fifty 

 feet in width. 



Mounds in Manitoba. Mr. 0. N. Bell, of Win- 

 nipeg, read a paper in the British Association 

 on the sepulchral mounds of the Canadian 

 Northwest, in which he showed that there is a 

 continuous line of mounds from the mound- 

 centers of the Mississippi river, down the Red 

 river, to Lake Winnipeg. Human remains, 

 much decayed, were found in the mounds, all 

 buried by being placed on the surface under 

 heaps of earth in which patches of ashes and 

 charcoal frequently occurred, but no remains 

 of funeral feasts were found. Indians, when 

 first met with, buried weapons with their war- 

 riors, but none were found in these mounds, 

 although implements and ornaments of shell, 



