I lO 



NATURE 



{Dec. 9, 1875 



Around the circumference were placed upright slabs of 

 limestone three feet high, and at least ten bodies had been 

 lodged in the grave, arranged in a sitting posture with 

 their backs against the slabs, and the hole had then been 

 filled up. The teeth showed that the majority were of 

 middle age, whilst the remainder included old persons 

 and children still retaining their milk teeth. The Hme- 

 stone slabs projected a few inches above the present sur- 

 face of the soil, so that if the grave had ever been covered 

 with an earth mound the latter must have been removed, 

 perhaps washed away. The only artificial object found 

 was one solitary potsherd ; hence there is no evidence to 

 prove or disprove any speculation which may be indulged 

 respecting the people whose burial-ground had been thus 

 laid open in the interest of science. It is perhaps safe to 

 conclude that all the bodies found in the grave were 

 placed there at one and the same time. 



The Salt Cave, near the Mammoth Cave, and rivalling 

 it in the size of some of its branches, was difficult of access, 

 on account of loose rocks which had fallen from the 

 roof, and of a stream of falling water running off be- 

 tween them. Having effected an entrance, the descent 

 of a steep hill of loose rock led into a large gallery 

 several miles in length, the floor of which was covered with 

 fallen rocks. Small areas were occasionally found, how- 

 ever, where no such masses presented themselves, but 

 where fires had been kindled, and where small piles of 

 stones had been raised around a small central hole 

 having ashes and remnants of burnt sticks at the bottom ; 

 whilst on the adjacent rocks there were in some cases 

 found small bundles of sticks tied with bark, and of a 

 convenient size to be placed in the holes, thus indicat- 

 ing that they had been brought into the cave to be used 

 as lights and as firewood. 



Further on, in a small chamber never previously visited 

 by a white man, there were seen on the cave earth the im- 

 prints of feet shod with peculiar braided mocassins or san- 

 dals. In some of the side chambers were found a great 

 number of cast-off sandals, very finely made of the twisted 

 leaves of some rush braided in a careful and artistic way. 

 The manner of braiding was identical with that of the straw 

 sandals from China, but the form of the sandal itself was 

 different. About twenty-five of these sandals, of various 

 sizes and of slightly varying designs, but all worn through 

 at toe and heel, were found in the interior chamber of 

 the cave. 



A piece of cloth more than a foot square, and finely 

 and regularly woven, probably from the inner bark of 

 some tree, was also found, and was especially interesting 

 from having been dyed or coloured with black and white 

 stripes, and from having in one place been mended by 

 darning. 



Mr. Putnam also exhibited bunches of the bark used to 

 make the cloth, and of different degrees of fineness ; a num- 

 ber of pieces of bark, twine, and rope, some made of twisted 

 strands simply, whilst others were of a five-strand braid 

 and of a more pliable substance ; a small piece of quite a 

 delicate fringe or tassel of neatly braided fibres ; a num- 

 ber of reed " torches," generally burnt at one end ; a few 

 small fragments of burnt wood, one of them showing the 

 rough cutting of a flint axe ; several fragments of a large 

 gourd, of a species probably not indigenous ; two flint 

 arrow-points ; a few fragments of shells of the Unio ; and 

 a few feathers of probably the wild turkey. All the spe- 

 cimens of cloth, &c. from Salt Cave were extremely 

 brittle, and had only been preserved by saturating them 

 with gelatine and afterwards mounting between glass. 

 No bones or other relics indicative of the food of the cave 

 people were found, nor was there any evidence of human 

 interment, though the earth in one of the chambers had 

 been disturbed ; the state of Mr. Putnam's health, how- 

 ever, prevented him from making anything like an ex- 

 haustive examination. It is encouraging to know that it 

 is intended to continue the work until more is ascer- 



tained of the archasology of this large group of important 

 American caves. 



The discovery, in 1812-15, of bodies buried with care in 

 some of the caves of Kentucky and Tennessee, and of the 

 numerous articles found with them, was alluded to by 

 Mr. Putnam, who stated that since his return from Ken- 

 tucky he had examined the body, and what remained of 

 the very large number of articles found with it, that was 

 so widely known as the "Mammoth Cave Mummy" sixty 

 years ago. This body, in reality found in Short Cave, 

 had been taken to the Mammoth Cave, eight miles 

 distant, for exhibition. The relics had been sadly 

 neglected, and many of the articles found in the grave 

 had been lost and others had gone to decay ; still enough 

 remained, at the rooms of the American Antiquarian 

 Society at Worcester, to identify the articles found in 

 Salt Cave as the same in material, design, and structure 

 as those found with the body in Short Cave, so that he 

 had thus secured undoubted osteological characters to go 

 with the articles of clothing, &c., of the Salt Cave people, 

 and he thought that we could, with little doubt, class this 

 people among the more highly civilised and agricultural 

 of the prehistoric races of America. 



SCIENCE IN ITALY* 



JUDGING from the number of scientific papers that we 

 are in the habit of receiving from Italy, we are glad to 

 infer that the restoration of political unity and freedom 

 has also brought about a revival of that intellectual vigour 

 which we are accustom ^d to associate with the names of 

 Dante and Tasso, Galileo and Torricelli. When Italy 

 was divided, and each State politically oppressed, her 

 best men were in exile, and their best scientific work was 

 expressed in a foreign tongue. Research was not only 

 not encouraged, it was practically prohibited. It seems 

 incredible, but it is nevertheless true, that the Austrian 

 and Bourbon Governments, in their dread of novelty, 

 would not allow the results of modern research to be 

 taught in the schools. The text-books reproduced the 

 exploded science of the past, in which the modern theory 

 of dew, for example, was ignored; so that Melloni (whose 

 bast work was done in Paris, and its results published in 

 French journals), in making a series of observations on 

 the nocturnal cooling of bodies in the neighbourhood of 

 Naples, wished to show that the laws of terrestrial radia- 

 tion were the same in Italy as in countries where there 

 was more political "liberty. We have it on the authority 

 of Matteucci, that he and others, when they revisited 

 their native land, were placed under the surveillance of 

 the police, not from the fear of their meddling with 

 politics, but on account of the scientific reputation which 

 conferred distinction upon them. 



Under such circumstances science could not flourish, 

 and the time has perhaps been too short since Italy re- 

 covered her freedom to enable her to do much more than 

 revive the glories of the past, and to seek encouragement 

 in the example of the great men who have gone before. 

 Hence it is that in the papers before us, points are dis- 

 cussed in connection with objects of Italian discovery, 

 such as the electrophorus and the condenser, in which 

 old names are curiously mingled with new. Thus Bec- 

 caria, Qipinus, Priestley, Volta, and Avogadro are asso- 



* " On Certain Principles of Electrostatics." A series of experiment?. 

 By Prof. G. Cantoni. " Su Alcuni Principj," &c. (Milan, 1873.)— " On 

 Certain Controverted Points in Electrostatics." Note by the same. (Milan, 

 1873.) — "Important Observations of Beccana on Electrical Condensers." 

 By the same. Read before the Royal Society of Science and Literature of 

 Lombardy, Feb. 20, 1873. — "On the Polarisation of Electrics." By the 

 same. Read December 4 and 18, 1873.— "On the Limits of Resistance in 

 Electrics.'' By the same. Read April 23, 1S74. — " Experiments in Electro- 

 statics." Parts I and 2. By the same. Read June 25 and Dec. 24, 1874. — 

 " The Discoveries of Fusinieri : historical notes illustrated by an account of 

 some of his instruments preserved in the Civil Museum of Vicenza." By 

 G. Nardi. " Le Scoperte del Fusinieri." &c. (Vicenza, 1875.)— "The 

 Theory of the Combination of Gases by means of Solids, as elaborated by 

 Fusinieri, in 1824," &c. By G. Nardi. Read before the Academie Olim- 

 pica, 19th May, 1875. " La Teoria," &c. (Vicenza, 1875.) 



