280 Primitive Man. [May, 
is doubtless true of other kinds whose habitat was inland, and 
whole races of mammals and birds may have once existed of 
which no traces whatever remain, and this too within compara- 
tively recent times. Keeping these considerations in view, it * 
seems not at all improbable that the same fate may have be- 
fallen the remains of the earliest man. 
As the ease with which food can be procured determines the 
habitat of animals, so also it determines that of man, and this 
naturally brings him to the shores of seas, lakes, and rivers, where 
it can be had with the greatest ease. It is hardly conceivable 
that he could, under any circumstances, at once have entered 
upon an agricultural or hunter life, since these both require expe- 
dients and inventions which long experience and education alone 
can give. Without tools or inventions of any sort, life in the 
forest, it would seem, would be for him almost impossible. Be 
this as it may, the wide geographical distribution of shell-heaps 
shows how generally man has been attracted by the kinds of 
food the shores yield, including not only shell-fish but fish and 
game, and the extent to which they have supplied his wants in 
his early periods. They are found at intervals along the whole 
Atlantic coast of the United States from the Bay of Fundy to 
the Gulf of Mexico, on the shores of California and northward to 
Behring’s Sea, in Central America, the Gulf of Guayaquil, on 
the coast of Brazil, Patagonia, and Terra del Fuego, on the shores 
of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Denmark, in the 
Malay Peninsula, in Australia and Tasmania, and will doubtless 
be discovered in still other parts of the world. 
Besides those just mentioned, other shell-heaps haye been found 
on the interior rivers of the continent, especially the Mississipp! 
and its tributaries. Atwater, who was the pioneer in inquiries 
relating to them, described the mounds of mussel shells on the 
banks of the Muskingum, containing various articles of human 
make, and LeSueur and Say explored a mound at New Harmony; 
Indiana, as early as 1826. Since then Dr. D. G. Brinton, Dr- 
Cox, Generals Humphreys and Abbott, and Professor ©. A: 
White have described many other localities in the great Mis- 
sissippi Valley where they exist in large numbers, and show how 
generally the habit of eating shell-fish prevailed in that region. 
In addition to the fresh-water shell-heaps of the St. John’s, 
Florida, we have examined a well-defined shell-heap on the 
shores of the Concord, in Massachusetts, consisting of Ui me 
complanatus, living specimens of which can be had from the river 
