To: 
OF NEW ENGLAND. 5t3 
Single article which could be regarded as having been 
made by, or derived from the white man, nor did we 
obtain any evidence that these particular heaps had been 
materially added to since the European has occupied these 
shores. Had intercourse with Europeans been once fairly 
established, it were a reasonable presumption that we 
should have found at least a glass bead, a fragment of 
earthenware, or an instrument of some sort indicative 
of the fact, especially when we bear in mind that it would 
be in just such places, where the savages collected around 
their fires and seething-pots to cook and eat, that such 
objects might be expected to be broken or lost. Finally, 
if the statements of Williamson on the authority of John- 
son be correct, viz., that “a heavy growth of trees was 
found on them” (the deposits of clam-shells near Mount 
Desert) “by the first settlers,” we have something like 
satisfactory evidence that their age could not have been 
less than between three or four centuries. 
Remains of Animals. Human remains have not been 
found in the shell-heaps of Denmark, except in the case 
of casual burials, as of a shipwrecked sailor, or of burials 
from some other unusual occurrence, and these are of a 
modern date. The same absence of human remains marks 
the shell-heaps we are describing, with a single exception. 
At Cotuit Port an unequivocal metatarsal bone from the 
great toe of the human foot was discovered. No other 
bones were found with it, except those of animals. It 
was so deeply buried, and its appearance was such, that 
no doubt exists that it was of the same age as the heap it- 
self; we have therefore assigned it a place in the following 
table, which gives a list of the species of animals uncovered 
and identified by their bones, or shells, in the different 
heaps, and shows their relative distribution through them. 
