﻿Reviews — Greenes Geology for Students and General Readers. 29 



The " Sambaqiiis " with entire shells are undoubtedly Kitchen- 

 middens, and the work of man. Prof. Wiener has examined a num- 

 ber of these " Sambaquis" or "Casquieiros," making vertical sections 

 through them. Some show, amidst the heap of shells, black spots of 

 irregular form, arising from charcoal, ashes, stones blackened by 

 fire, etc. ; there are also bones of fishes, portions of skeletons of birds 

 (especially parrots), splintered human bones, and broken stone axes. 

 These are evidently the remains of repasts, chiefly composed of shell- 

 fish. The heap of refuse having reached a certain height, the upper- 

 most shells were thrown downward, and new ones heaped up, till 

 the whole came to a height too troublesome for the laziness of the 

 natives, who then chose a new place for their repasts. In other 

 " Casquieiros" the section shows horizontal layers of earth ; conse- 

 quently those who heaped them up must have lived above the 

 remains of their repasts, or, at least, not amidst them. 



A third class are real hurying-places made of ferruginous soil. 

 These contain decomposed, but entire, human skeletons, well- 

 jDreserved weapons, and stone mortars of finest workmanship ; 

 thus indicating an advanced state of civilization, in which human 

 remains had ceased to be an article of food, .and had become an 

 object of respect. 



The relative age of the " Sambaquis " could perhaps be best stated 

 by their topographical situation. All of them, natural or artificial, 

 stood originally along the sea-shore, as people who did not take the 

 trouble to do away with the remains of their repasts cannot be sup- 

 posed to have daily transported a heavy load many miles inland, and 

 this, under the rays of a tropical sun. 



Generally the period of chipped stone-implements is considered 

 more ancient than that oi polished ones ; the reverse must be admitted 

 for this part of America. The materials of the second period are 

 dioritic or basaltic, and thus far softer and requiring less perfect 

 tools in shaping than the harder ones of the first period. Basaltic 

 rocks, of schistose texture, abound along the coast. A grindstone 

 and a file were found to be sufficient to work an axe out of them. 

 Fragments of the coarse-grained granite, in which these basalts are 

 imbedded, such as were washed out by the sea, served to give, by 

 rubbing, the form of an axe to any basaltic fragment. It must be 

 remarked that polished stone-weapons are exclusively found along 

 the coast, and as excluisvely chipped ones in the interior ; and that 

 the inland natives are more advanced in civilization than those living 

 along: the coast. 



i2,EAriEA?v"S. 



I. — Geology for Students and General Eeaders. Part I. 

 Physical Geology. By A. H. Green, M.A., F.G.S., Professor of 

 Geology in the Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds. 8vo. pp. 

 652 and 143 woodcuts. (London : Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1876.) 



IN the preface to his work Prof. Green remarks, that most geo- 

 logists are now obliged to concentrate their attention on some 



