534 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



any known, or even probable, European expedition along the Missouri River, 

 we must assign it to prehistoric time and a prehistoric people. 



" The State, or some scientific association of the State, ought to purchase the 

 land upon which this mysterious, " Old Fort" is situated and preserve it as left by 

 its builders. We should snatch one little spot from the hand of cupidity and the 

 ravages of time and hold it sacred to the past and the memory of a lost race." 



For fear of drawing too heavily upon your space in the present number, I 

 will ask to continue this summary in your next one. 



Paleolithic. 



KansAS City, December 15th, 1881. 



DR. EDWARD PALMER'S RESEARCHES IN MEXICO. 



Mr. Putnam said that it gave him great pleasure to call attention to the im- 

 portant work which Dr. Edward Palmer had done in Mexico, while acting under 

 his direction for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Cambridge. Dr. Palm- 

 er had recently returned from the southwestern portion of Coahuila where he had 

 been, notwithstanding many difficulties, very successful in exploring several 

 •caves that long ago were used as burial places by the Indians of that region. 

 These burial caves have been mentioned by a few writers, and stories have been 

 told, by people who visited them or heard of them, nearly half a century ago, of 

 the immense number of human bodies that they contained. Since then the 

 caves have been, unfortunately, pretty thoroughly worked over for nitre, and it 

 is said that thousands of the "mummies," as the bundles of human bones are 

 called, were used for fuel by the nitre workers. Dr. Palmer, however, after con- 

 siderable search in several caves, had found in their deep recesses a number of 

 the bundles that had not been disturbed and these he had brought to Cambridge, 

 where they had been carefully opened and their contents and wrappings arranged 

 in such a way as to keep all belonging to a bundle together. Each bundle, it was 

 found, contained the bones of one or more human skeletons and various objects 

 such as ornaments, implements, small baskets, sandals, and articles of clothing. 

 The great resemblances of these "mummies" with those found in the caves in 

 Kentucky and Tennessee is of particular interest. Mr. Putnam stated that he 

 considered the collection one of great interest and that a detailed account of it 

 would be given, in which Dr. Palmer's notes would be incorporated. 



Dr. Palmer then exhibited a small portion of the collection, including a 

 number of pieces of cloth which were beautifully woven from agave fibre, also 

 ■cords and bands made of the same fibre, baskets which were probably used as 

 food vessels, large stone knives that were fastened to short handles of wood, shell 

 and bone beads, a necklace made by stringing the vertebrae of a snake on several 

 pieces of soft cord, portions of a fringed skirt, on the edge of which feathers had 

 been fastened, a feather head-dress, braided sandals, and many other interesting 

 objects which were found in the bundles. Some of the pieces of woven cloth 



