398 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 



he was led to assume the existence of Phallic rites among the ancient 

 idolators of the Ohio valley. One of these specimens of aboriginal 

 sacred sculpture was accidentally discovered in ploughing a piece of 

 land newly reclaimed from the forest. The utensils found in the 

 Tennessee graves have all been made of stone or obsidian ; and the 

 greater number of the idols are in like manner sculptured in stone of 

 various kinds and degrees of hardness. But the figure now referred 

 to is made of clay and pounded shells, and, like other examples 

 which have been met with, has been hardened in the fire. It repre- 

 sents a naked human figure, kneeling, with the hands clasped in 

 front ; and when found, it still occupied as its primitive niche or 

 sanctuary, a large tropical shell, (Cassis fiammea,) from which the 

 interior whorles and columella had been removed, with the exception 

 of a small portion at the base, cut off flat, so as to form a pedestal 

 for tbe kneeling figure. The special application of this example of 

 the tropical cassides, thus found so remote from its native habitat, 

 adds a peculiar interest to it, as manifestly associated with the re- 

 ligious rites of the ancient race by whom the spoils of southern seas 

 were transported inland, and converted to purposes of ornament and 

 use. 



The discovery of examples of similar tropical relics, or of articles 

 of personal ornament fashioned from them, when found to the north 

 of the Great Lakes, is still more calculated to excite surprise, though 

 the chief interest they possess is from the light they are calculated 

 to throw on the traces of ancient migration, or of traffic between 

 the north and south, in ages prior to the displacement of the Eed 

 Man by the European. Two of such large tropical shells, both of 

 them specimens of the pyrula 'perversa, the native habitats of which 

 are the Antilles, and the Bay of Campeachy on the main land, have 

 been presented to the Canadian. Institute ; not as additions to its 

 specimens of native conchology of the tropics, but as Indian relics 

 pertaining to the great northern chain of fresh water lakes. The 

 first of these was discovered on opening an Indian grave-mound, at 

 !N^ottawasaga, on the Gf-eorgian Bay, along with a gorget made from 

 the same kind of shell. The second example was brought from the 

 Eishing Islands, near Cape Hurd, on Lake Huron, and a third speci- 

 men, now the property of James Beaty, Esq., Toronto, partially 

 honey-combed by age and decomposition, constituted one of the con- 

 tents of a large sepulchral depository in the same Northern Lake 



