322 Mr. R. Walker on Ancient Shell 



but as to the social condition and everyday life, so to speak, 

 of the people who practised these rites they tell us little or no- 

 thing. In the shell-mounds, on the other hand, and more espe- 

 cially in the lake-dwellings, we can see, to some extent at least, 

 the social condition attained by the people. The animals which 

 they had captured or domesticated, the plants they cultivated, 

 their mode of treating the bones in order to extract the marrow 

 and animal juice, their culinary vessels, their domestic and war- 

 like implements, are all brought to light. Last, though not 

 least, we are in this way made acquainted with the animals 

 and plants that were the contemporaries of primeval man, and 

 how far he was then able to subordinate them to his wants at a 

 remote period of his existence, in the investigation of which 

 written history lends us no aid. The mound with which we are 

 more immediately concerned was discovered in the summer of 

 1864, during the cutting of a main drain along the scores on 

 the north side of St. Andrews. The mound, at the place where 

 the drain passes through it, is about 55 yards from the edge of 

 the cliff, which presents a perpendicular face to the sea of about 

 45 feet in height. The sea washes against the bottom of it at 

 half tides. This kitchen heap lay at a depth of 3 feet from the 

 surface; its greatest thickness was 18 inches; its length, so 

 far as exposed, about 70 yards ; and it was laid on a stratum of 

 drift, sand, and gravel, which had evidently been the surface of 

 the ground previously to the accumulation of the shell-mound. 

 The superincumbent mass was chiefly black earth. The contents 

 of the mound consisted of shells, broken bones, fragments of pot- 

 tery, and two or three stone weapons. No metallic implement 

 or ornament of any kind was turned up, so far as I could learn. 

 About the same time some workmen, in digging the foundation 

 of two houses about halfway between the thickest part of the 

 deposit and the sea, cut through what appeared to be the thin 

 edge of the bed, and dug up a great number of fragments of 

 pottery, pieces of bones (some of them burnt), shells, and a con- 

 siderable number of broken and chipped stones; amongst them 

 there were a few better-shaped articles, which had evidently been 

 intended for weapons. All these things lay from 2 to 3 feet 

 from the surface, and were somewhat mixed with the upper part 

 of the drift bed, which appeared to have been a good deal dis- 

 turbed at some former period. This appeared to me, from the 

 marks of fires at two or three places (and some of them were 

 pretty distinct), to be the place where the ancient mound-build- 

 ers had had their dwellings. Whether the fires were kept out- 

 side or inside may not be easy to say ; at all events, at one place 

 at least the fire had undoubtedly been kindled in a hole dug in 

 the ground perhaps a foot or more in depth ; the surrounding 



