56 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



utensils agreeing with those found in the pits. After 

 an extensive and most laborious investigation of this 

 locality, the only explanation of the peculiar feature of 

 the pits is, that at certain times or on certain special 

 occasions the whole contents of a house were burned, and 

 the remains and all the ashes buried in a pit, while the 

 quantity of bones found indicates that the ceremony was 

 accompanied by feasting. The thick layer of leaf-mould 

 covering the pits, graves, and house-sites would indicate 

 an antiquity much greater than that of the large forest- 

 trees which grow on the present surface, while the 

 enormous number of the pits and the extent of the 

 cemetery, covering over fifteen acres of ground and from 

 which over five hundred skeletons have been obtained, 

 indicates that the place was permanently occupied by a 

 large population. 



American Shell-banks. 



Another class of remains, the shell-banks, are far more 

 numerous and extensive than the kitchen-middens of 

 Europe. They are found from Nova Scotia to the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and on the west coast they have been dis- 

 covered in Alaska and in California, while similar mounds, 

 composed entirely of fresh-water shells, occur in the 

 valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio, and other rivers. These 

 accumulations are often of great extent. One on the 

 coast of Georgia covers ten acres to a depth of from five 

 to ten feet. In Florida, on Amelia Island, a shell-heap 

 extends a quarter of a mile inland by a hundred and fifty 

 yards along the shore ; and many others are found thickly 

 scattered over a district a hundred and fifty miles long. 

 An immense number of works of art and animal and 

 human remains have been found in them, some of which 

 indicate a considerable antiquity. 



Cave-dwellings. 



America also has its cave dwellings, with characteristic 

 remains of their human inhabitants ; its cliff-houses, forts, 

 and towns, partly excavated and partly built up with good 



