' 978 The American Naturalist. [October, 
They evaporate it by throwing hot stones into the reservoirs of sap. 
The sugar is eaten mixed with corn. Sometimes the pure sugar is 
their only diet for amonth. They boil venison and rabbits in the hot 
sap as they evaporate it. They also make sugar from the silver maple 
and box elder. That the Indians made sugar from times unknown is 
proved by their language, their festivals, and their traditions. Several 
authors of early times, telling af their visits to the Indians, ınention 
maple sugar, and one of them, in 1756, describes the Indian’s mode of 
preparing it. The gathering of sap and making of sugar formed one of 
their annual religious ceremonies. 
** Fort Ancient, Ohio,’’ by Mr. Warren K. Moorehead.—Mr. Moore- 
head spent two summers in excavating the mounds and studying the 
topography of Fort Ancient, on the Miami River. He has shown as 
much energy in digging out Fort Ancient as Schliemann in excavating 
Troy. As an indirect result of his labors, the Legislature of Ohio 
authorized the purchase of the fort and surrounding ground as a State 
park, A map of Fort Ancient, together with a short notice of Mr. 
Moorehead’s work, was published in the AMERICAN NATURALIST, April, 
1890, p. 383. His book on that subject, just published, which has 
already passed its second edition, gives a complete account of this 
great prehistoric earthwork. 
The fort is really two, the old fort and the new fort, connected as 
by an isthmus. Each fort has about an acre and a-half of ground, 
and the two resemble in general shape North and South America, with 
` their connecting isthmus. The cemeteries, from which over two hun- 
dred skeletons have been removed and measured, reveal two classes of 
people, two kinds of implements, and two varieties of pottery, plain 
and ornamental. The village seems to have been occupied for three 
periods, and each period of occupancy lasted for many years. Four 
feet below the present surface there are occasionally a bed of ashes 
or a mass of burnt rock, around which and in which occur large 
numbers of perforated mussel shells, bone awls, shells of the land 
tortoise, pottery fragments, flint chips, hammer stones, etc. Then 
there are about two feet of earth, which may have been deposited in a 
freshet, or slowly accumulated during a period of one hundred or more 
years that the ground was unoccupied. Following this is a second 
layer, heavier, while the third or upper stratum is but one foot from the 
present surface. 
The preservation of minute bones, fragile shells, and perishable 
objects is due to the ashes, of which there were many bushels. 
There is a spot in a field within a half a mile of the new fort, 
