92 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 313 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



Indian Relics from North Carolina. 



During the past summer the writer was one of a party who 

 tramped through the mountains of western North Carolina for a 

 month. The country was extremely rough, and we were some- 

 what surprised at the e.xceeding abundance of Indian relics. Ar- 

 row-heads were found almost everywhere, and we often picked 

 them up even in the roads. There was hardly a mountaineer to be 

 found who had not at least a hatchet or a scraper, and often a na- 

 tive would come in smoking a pipe he had found in his cornfield. 

 The favorite material for the pipes and scrapers was soapstone. 

 Some of the former resembled in shape the common clay-pipe bowl ; 





and it is possible that such are recent, for it is not more than forty 

 or fifty years since the Cherokees roamed over all that region. 

 Still we saw none such among the Indians on the Reservation, and 

 of many of the relics they know as little as we. The hatchets 

 were of a variety of materials, and none of them highly polished. 



In almost every cornfield the soil was filled with fragments of 

 pottery, some solid and showing marks of fire, others crumbling to 

 dust. One could pick up pieces by the thousand, and not one could 

 be found which did not show some form of ornamentation. All 

 the designs were geometrical figures formed by combinations of 

 straight lines and curves, both circular and spiral. The edges of 

 the vessels seemed in some to be plain, and in others raised and 

 scalloped or notched. None were found showing any traces of 



handles, or any lines of chafing from cords. The designs wer^ 

 evidently made with a sharp point while the clay was soft. The 

 Cherokees still make much of their own pottery, but it is rude, and 

 as a rule unornamented. 



We ran across several specimens which puzzled us. One, which 

 is represented in Fig. i, was shown to us by the owner of a gold- 

 mine near Cashiers Valley. Jackson County. It was washed out in 

 the gravel. We were permitted to make a drawing of it. It is 

 neatly cut from a greenish soapstone, and is quite smooth. It is 

 badly broken, but the apparent form is indicated by the dotted line- 

 It resembles somewhat one of the old-fashioned sugar-loaf hats, 

 and is neatly hollowed out on the inside. Nearly in the middle of 

 the side, as will be seen from the drawing, is a small hole drilled 

 through the stone. We could think of no possible use for such an 

 implement. 



Another interesting one, found in a field near the Nautehala 

 Mountains, in Macon County, is shown in Fig. 2. It is an oval 

 block of soapstone, with perfectly fiat ends, and has in one end a 



neatly cut circular hole 1.5 centimetres in diameter, and 2.3 centi- 

 metres deep. The length of the specimen is 9,7 centimetres, and its 

 greatest treadth 8.5 centimetres. The surface is comparatively 

 smooth, but no attempt seems to have been made to polish it. It 

 is now in the possession of the writer, who would be glad to re- 

 ceive any information as to its use. 



The only mound we saw is close to the town of Franklin, the 

 county seat of Macon County. This stands on the bottom-lands, 

 not far from the Tennessee, and is well preserved. It is an oval 

 truncated cone ; and we estimated the greatest diameter of the 

 base at seventy-five feet, and its height at twenty feet. We heard 

 of another on the road from Charleston to the Indian Reservation 

 at Yellow Hill, but failed to find it. Beads, arrow-points, pottery, 

 and other relics, are often ploughed up near these mounds, but the 

 limited time at our disposal prevented any very thorough explora- 

 tion. L. N. Johnson. 



Evanston, 111., Jan. 19. 



The Characteristic Curves of Composition. 



I WAS intensely interested in the article Science published more 

 than a year ago, by Professor Mendenhall, on style curves, and 

 made up my mind to submit the Bacon-Shakspeare question to a 

 style-curve test at once. But somehow it was only last week that I 



got at it. I enclose you the result. The light line is Bacon ; the 

 heavy, Shakspeare. 



In order to understate it, if possible. I selected the Shakspeare 

 from Oliver's speech ( Twelfth Night, II. i. no), — a passage almost 

 as sententious as Bacon's acknowledged work ; and the Bacon 

 from his " Essay on Youth and Age." Appleton Morgan. 



New York, Jan. iq. 



The Permian Rocks of Texas. 



As it is evident that the question of the occurrence of Permian 

 strata in America will again be raised at an early day, and that 

 generalizations will be based upon the as yet little studied Texas 

 region, it may be in order to state that we have here a great series 

 of beds, beginning west of the 97th meridian, and succeeding the 

 carboniferous ; and beneath the undoubted Wealdan beds of the 

 cretaceous, a great development of strata, the lower half of which 

 cannot possibly be referred to any other age than the Permian, 

 although the upper portion is probably triassic. Professor Cope 

 has long since described the vertebrates of these Permian beds ; 

 and the Molhtsca, I am informed, are now being examined. The 

 stratigraphy, however, has as vet only been reconnoitred, and no 

 section whatever determined. The writer, however, made two 

 journeys across the region into New Mexico last summer, to observe 

 the problem, and was impressed with a fact which should be borne in 

 mind in future discussions of the region. The stratigraphic features 

 agree, as far as could be seen, in nearly every generality with those 

 of the Kanab Valley of Utah as described by Mr. C. D. Walcott, a 

 few years ago, in the American Journal of Science, and were the 

 direct eastward continuation of the same. Not only does this sim- 

 ilarity agree with the Permian beds, but with the upper beds, 

 which he calls triassic. This connects the Grand Caiionand Texas 

 Permian-triassic basin beyond all doubt ; and to Mr. Walcott be- 

 longs the credit of the first and only intelligible section of the 

 American Permian, a most marked and unmistakable terrain, the 

 discovery of which was made, as agreed, by Professor Jules Marcou. 

 This fact, together with the distinct basin type of structure of the 

 trans-Pecos region, to which I have recently called attention, and 

 the determination of many distinctly western geographic features 

 extending two-thirds the way across Texas, makes this State pre- 

 dominatingly western, although its eastern third is within the limit 

 of the timber-covered southern coastal plain. 



ROBT. T. Hill. 



Austin, Tex., Jan. 21. 



