OF NEW ENGLAND. 575 
Some were hunted as articles of food, others for their skin, 
and still others for both. Precisely where the line is to 
be drawn between those which are and are not edible, or 
what animal an Indian would absolutely refuse to eat, it 
is impossible to say. Although the kinds of meat used 
were in the main palatable, the natives certainly did not 
hesitate to make use of some which do not commend 
themselves to the taste of civilized people. Josselyn, 
who, of all the earlier writers, has given the most com- 
plete account of the animals found on the coast of New 
England, states that “the Indians, when weary with trav- 
elling, will take them (the rattlesnakes) up with their 
bare hands, laying hold with one hand behind their head, 
with the other taking hold of their tail, and with their 
teeth tear off the skin of their backs, and feed upon them 
alive, which, they say, refresheth them.”* 
The bones of the deer and birds outnumber those of 
all the other kinds. The condition in which they are 
found bears a striking resemblance to that of the bones 
from the shell-heaps of Scotland, the Orkneys, and Den- 
mark. Nearly all the fragments from the deer were those 
of the long bones, which in the living animal are either 
covered by the largest amount of flesh, or contain the 
most marrow. Not one of them was whole, all having 
been broken up for the double purpose of extracting the 
marrow, a custom almost world wide among savages, and 
often practised by hunters, and of accommodating them to 
the size of the vessel in which they were cooked. Even 
the phalanges of the toes were treated in the same way. 
The bones of the bear, though much less numerous, 
were similarly broken up, and in two instances had been 
carbonized by contact with the fire. Among the speci- 
*New England’s Rarities Discovered. London, 1672. p. 39. 
