ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 23 



the painter's canvas, ever on the easel, and may be retouched 

 at any moment, even after the death of its author. This 

 fact leads to the differentiation of the parts of speech, en- 

 ables a people to increase the number of sentential functions, 

 and to define their limits ; to vary the composition and col- 

 location of the terms which express these functions ; to an- 

 swer the demands of rigid logic by a better separation of 

 subject, predicate, and modifier ; and, finally, to add strength 

 and beauty to mere utterance by an infinite variety of purely 

 rhetorical devices. 



There is no doubt that writing, in addition to being the 

 vehicle and instrument of thought, is itself a factor in the 

 problem of civilization, not only borrowing its improved 

 form from an improved culture, but itself reciprocating the 

 favor in contributing to human advancement. 



On the Aboriginal Shell-heaps at Pope's Creek, Mary- 

 land. 



By ELMER R. REYNOLDS. 



Mr. Reynolds discovered these shell-heaps in 1878. They 

 are sixty miles south of Washington, at the confluence of 

 Pope's Creek and the Potomac River, in Charles County, 

 Maryland. They are situated within the territory of the 

 Yoacomico Indians, whose headquarters were near the 

 present site of St. Mary's, south of Wicomico River. An 

 account of these Indians may be found in Father White's 

 Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam. Between 1634 and 1640 

 the Yoacomico Indians ceded their land to the Colony of 

 St. Mary's, after which they gradually disappeared as a 

 tribe, although many of their descendants remain near Al- 

 len's Fresh, Port Tobacco, and Nanjemoy. 



There are two of these shell-heaps, the larger one lying 

 on the north side of the creek, and the smaller, but more 

 interesting one, on the south side. In the former the shells 

 occupy the summit of a hill about 25 feet above tide-water 



