570 WYMAN ON THE SHELL-HEAPS 
Gould, is their maximum size on the Coast of Massachu- 
setts. It is, however, in remarkable contrast with a shell 
of the same species from one of the shell-heaps in Florida, 
which measured nearly fourteen inches in length. 
Of the remains of vertebrates, the bones of the deer 
were the most abundant; but those of the seal, the fox, 
the mink, of birds, including those of a duck and the wild 
turkey, of turtle and of fish were found. During a 
former examination of this locality by Mr. George G. 
Lowell and Dr. Algernon Coolidge, a canine of a bear 
and a part of the skull of a cat was obtained. ‘No stone 
implements, but a few worked pieces of bone were dug up, 
and also some fragments from which portions had been 
sawed off. The tine of a deer’s antler, from which the tip 
had been sawed off, is represented on Pl. 15, fig. 14. 
About two-thirds of the metatarsal bone of the great toe 
from a human foot was found, in company with the bones 
of the animals already mentioned, and is the only portion 
of the skeleton of man which we have discovered while 
examining the heaps here described. The writer would 
express his obligations to Mr. George G. Lowell for the 
opportunity of examining the locality at Cotuit Port, 
and for the gift of valeabi specimens. 
Age. Shell-heaps have become intimately associated 
with the question of the age of the human race, a ques- 
tion which has passed out of the domain of the written, 
into that of geological history. It can only be satisfacto- 
rily answered by following the method of the geologist, 
when he attempts to duirn the period when a given ani- 
mal existed in former geological times, viz. , by: a careful 
comparison of the remains of such animal with those of ex- 
isting species, and by an accurate study of the geological 
oe : os ee physical conditions under which they are found. 
