ARTIFICIAL SHELL-DEPOSITS. 245 



Professor Wyman examined in all forty-eight shell -heaps, which, of course, 

 cannot be singly referred to in this place. The shells composing them have 

 already been mentioned ; the list of mammals, birds, amphibians, and fishes, 

 represented in the heaps by broken bones, teeth, shells, etc., comprises the bear, 

 raccoon, hare, deer, otter, opossum, turkey, several undetermined species of 

 birds, the alligator, four species of turtles, the cat-fish, gar-pike, whiting, and 

 another species of fish not determined. Professor Wyman also met with bones 

 and teeth of extinct mammals (mastodon, elephant, etc.); but their remains had 

 undergone changes, from which he concluded that these animals had not been 

 contemporaneous with the people who left the mounds. These accumulations 

 also contain " human bones, broken up in the same manner as the bones of edible 

 animals, and believed to be the remains of cannibal feasts." As may be 

 imagined, fire-places were noticed. 



Stone implements occurred rarely in the mounds themselves, and they are 

 classed by the author of the memoir as flakes or chips, hammer-stones, arrow- 

 heads, and worked pieces resembling somewhat the implements of the Saint- 

 Acheul type. These artefacts generally present a very rude appearance. Better 

 implements, however, occur in some abundance on the surface and in the neigh- 

 borhood of the heaps, and are thought to have originated with the Creeks and 

 other Indian tribes, which, coming from South Carolina and Georgia, overran 

 East Florida more than a century ago, and, having conquered the natives of the 

 country, formed afterward the Seminole nation. Implements of bone, mostly 

 piercers, were of more frequent occurrence in the heaps than stone artefacts, and 

 there were likewise found bones and parts of antlers, to be made into implements, 

 as shown by the marks of sawing on them. Not unfrequent were chisels and 

 gouges made of the shell of Strombus gigas, Pyrula perversa, and Pyrula carica. 

 Drinking- vessels made of the first-named Pyrula, which were found on or a little 

 below the surface of the shell-heaps, are not considered as coeval with them, but 

 of later origin. The author also mentions among the objects obtained by him 

 during his exploration shells of the Pyrula carica, wrought in a certain manner 

 for a purpose not known to him. They are apparently the club-heads described 

 by me a year after the appearance of his memoir,* and may have replaced to a 

 certain extent the grooved stone axes, none of which were found by Professor 

 Wyman in or upon the shell-heaps. Ornaments were almost entirely wanting, 

 and not a single pipe came to light. No objects of copper, gold, silver, or other 

 metal were discovered by him. Fragments of a rude kind of pottery occurred 

 in the later but not in the oldest shell-heaps. 



The author concludes his interesting memoir with a resume, embodied in 



* The Archaeological Collection of the United States National Museum ; No. 287 of Smithsonian Contribu- 

 tions to Knowledge; Washington, 1876; p. 66. The modified shells, however, are mostly those of Pyrula per- 

 versa. 



