SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 387 



Similar accumulations of tlie shells of a species of Ampullacera, 

 largely eaten by the New Zealanders, have been observed, along with 

 various marine and other debris, including relics of native art, on 

 deserted sites along the New Zealand shores, although they have not 

 hitherto attracted more than a passing notice. But a greater interest 

 has been excited by extensive deposits of marine shells on difPerent 

 points of the North American coasts, accompanied with evidence of 

 artificial accumulation, not likely to escape the attention of those who in 

 this New World watch with so keen an eye for the slightest traces of 

 an ante-Columbian history. The abundant and large sized edible 

 mollusca of the North American sea-coasts could not fail to attract 

 the notice of an improvident and savage people, dependent on the pre- 

 carious products of the chase. Large banks of fossil shells occur in 

 many localities, where the changes in the relative levels of sea and 

 land have left these at considerable elevations, and far removed from 

 the modern beach. On such a bed of shells, of the Gnathodon — 

 formerly a favorite food of the Indians — the city of Mobile is built ; 

 and amid these natural accumulations of older centuries, occasional 

 indications of the former presence of the American aborigines have 

 been met with on the site of the modern city. But the following 

 narrative, by Sir Charles Lyell, in his second tour in the United 

 States, furnishes an interesting illustration of primitive American 

 traces of ancient culinary tastes and habits, analagous to those of 

 Europe already referred to. Describing his journey through a part 

 of Georgia, and his explorations of the lagoons of the Altamaha, Sir 

 Charles remarks : " We landed on the north-east end of St. Simon's 

 island, at Cannon's Point, where we were gratified by the sight of a 

 curious monument of the Indians, the largest mound of shells left by 

 the aborigines in any one of the sea islands. Here are no less than 

 ten acres of ground, elevated in some places ten feet, and on an aver- 

 age over the whole area, five feet above the general level, composed 

 throughout that depth of myriads of cast away oyster shells, with 

 some muscles, and here and there a mediola and helix. They who 

 have seen the Monte Testaceo, near Rome, know what great results 

 may proceed from insignificant causes, when the cumulative power of 

 time has been at work, so that a hill may be formed out of the broken 

 pottery rejected by the population of a large city. To them it will 

 appear unnecessary to infer, as some antiquaries have done, from the 

 magnitude of these Indian mounds, that they must have been thrown 



