Or 
Mooney.] 250 [Oct. 19, 
was collected a quantity of the bones of birds and small quadrupeds and 
mollusks. 
It is evident that the bones could not hav been arranged in this manner 
until by some process the skeleton had first been denuded of the flesh. 
This practice was common to many tribes of America, Africa, Australia, 
and Polynesia. The body was gene rally buried until the flesh had had 
time to decay, when the bones wer taken up and cleand and afterward 
laid away in a place set apart for that purpose. Some tribes allowd the 
body to decay on scaffolds above ground, while the Australians first skind 
the corpse and then cut the flesh from the bones, roasted it over a fire and 
partook of the cannibal feast.* With the Hurons, Choctaws and other 
Indian tribes the final disposition of the bones was made the occasion of 
a solemn feast of the dead,{ and when the tribe removed to a new loca- 
tion the bones wer carefully packd up and taken along by the surviving 
relativs, just as the Chinese returning from America to their nativ land 
bring with them the bones of their deceasd friends whose bodies hav 
been temporarily deposited in foreign soil. 
We may assume that the people who practiced this method wer earlier 
and lower in the scale than those who practiced extended burial or sim- 
ple cremation, as we know from analogy that disjointed burial, as a 
national custom, is found only among savages. The existence of ossuaries 
in Paris, Naples, and other large cities on the continent, as wel as the prac- 
tice of bone exhumation in Ireland, is due to the lack of grave space in 
the regular cemeteries, while in these ancient Irish interments each dis- 
jointed skeleton is commonly isolated in a separate grave. The beautiful 
pottery sometimes found in the vault is no evidence of a high develop. 
ment, as it is wel known that the rudest tribes frequently excel in this art. 
The shape of the skul shows, if it shows anything, not the degree of civili- 
zation to which the race had attaind, but the degree of which it was 
capable, while the very method of burial, with the attendant sididadon 
of human as wel as animal sacrifice, proves that while this race may hav 
been of the Aryan stock, it was a race which had as yet made hardly the 
first step toward civilization. 
The examples of entire or extended burial ar rare. The kistvaen in 
this case is enclosed in a mound and contains one or more skeletons in a 
recumbent position, A mound of this class in the Phoenix park, Dublin, 
opend in 1838, containd a stone chamber with two perfect male skeletons 
and parts of another, with a single bone, apparently that of a dog. Under 
each skul wer a number of small sea shels, which may hav formd a neck- 
lace or an amulet. A small bone fibula, resembling those found in Den- 
mark, and a flint arrow head, wer also found. Within the mound, but 
* Albert McDonald, Mode of Preparing the Dead among the Natives of the Upper 
Mary River, Queensland, Jour. Anth. Inst., ii, 116-9, London, 1873; Edward Palmer, 
Notes on some Australian Beliefs, Jour. Anth. Inst., xiii, ne London, 1884. For the 
method in use among the Choctaws, etc., see Adair, Am. Inds., 183, London, 1775. 
+ Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, 71-8, Sivests 1867; James Adair, 
Hist. Am. Inds., 183, London, 1775. 
