692 The American Naturalist. (August, 
Mr. Cushing is a member, with the work whose results have delighted 
the friends of the University. 
Summarized by Mr. Cushing in two newspapers (Philadelphia 
Times and New York Journal Sunday, June 21st, 1896) these results 
are represented by the array of specimens now in the Pepper Labora 
tory at Philadelphia. They witness the good fortune of Dr. Pepper 
and the University and the successful excavation of Mr. Cushing. The 
muck-filled artificial shell basin at or near where Coloned Durnford 
had worked, dammed, baled and cleaned out, and a large mound ex- 
cavated 200 miles to the northward procured a superabundance of 
beautiful and unique remains. 
The work shows that a storehouse of aboriginal manufactures escap- 
ing the notice of a good deal of reconnaissance, liad lain unobserved 
within easy reach of scientific institutions in the east, testifying further 
to the fact that mud or permanent damp has here done for the 
Archeologist what permanent dryness has done at the Cliff Dwellings 
of Arizonaand in Egypt. As at the Swiss Lake Dwellings here again, 
a whole category of remains that have perished elsewhere in the eastern 
United States have survived hermetically sealed in the ooze. 
A few of the salient features of the collection concern : 
(1) Facts relating to burial; crania from the mound and muck with 
funeral paraphrenalia. 
(2) The relation of pottery, found in great abundance, to burial, 
and the allegoric and religious significance of fictile designs. 
(3) The use of totemic ornaments, of masks representing the human 
face in ceremonials, and the allegorical significance of carvings repre- 
senting the heads of animals, and paintings on wood. 
(4) The economic facts of daily life illustrated by means of well pre- 
preserved utensils and vessels of wood and by the haftings of wood and 
shell implements. 
(6) Interesting data referring to the arrangement of canals, shell 
walls, basins, the height of shell mounds and what appear to be vestiges 
of pile-built houses sunken in mud and sufficiently indicated for study. 
It will not be easy for the archzeologist suddenly confronted by this 
display of aboriginal handiwork outshining the long toiled for gather- 
ings of other searchers in the East, to hold fast to the caution that the 
occasion demands, to realize how much and how littlesuch preservation 
of perishable remains signifies in a given case, to remember in the infer- 
red estimate of cultural status that multitudes of similar objects, betoken- 
ing the life history of other tribes in the eastern United States have per- 
ished, in short to weigh considerations that must temper the use of 
