396 The American Naturalist. [April, 
lower segment of a jar nearly four inches in diameter, but narrowed at 
bottom. The fragment is about 5} inches high. ‘These jars were found 
near the oak stump. 
Near the southern end of the excavation a piece of cane basket was 
exhumed. It was taken—still in the lump of mud—to Mr. E. Mc- 
Uhenny, who still has it. It is of a very coarse make, and about 4 
inches square. Mr. McIlhenny has given us the lump of mud with 
some bits of cane still sticking to it, and the impress of the remainder. 
It seems to have come from the lower part of the loam, below the level 
of most of the other human vestiges. 
Mixed with the pottery everywhere were bones (mostly those of deer) 
with shells of a small tortoise, and of the same clam now found in Lake 
Ponchartrain— Gnathodon cuneatus ; also a few mussels (Unio). 
The loam was generally penetrated by small roots, most of them ap- 
parently those of marsh grasses or cane, with some of exogenous trees or 
shrubs. On the east side there were a good many leaves of live oak 
( Quercus virens), wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera) and others not identi- 
fied. Some of these leaves (oak, myrtle and others) were still green. 
This phenomenon I can only explain by supposing the freshly fallen 
leaves to have been buried under a caving bank, and hermetically 
sealed by the stiff, waxy soil, which had never since become dry enough 
to admit the air. The leaves began to fade within half an hour, and 
in three hours had the ordinary brown color of a macerated leaf. They 
were seen while green by Manager John H. Hamilton and Mr Haus- 
man of the mining company ; Capt. Jas. Hare, of the U.S. Lighthouse 
Service, Mr. and Mrs. McIlhenny, Capt. Dudley Avery, and others. 
We also found, at the same spot, some bent and twisted strips of 
bark, that were, perhaps, handles of baskets. They are badly decayed, 
however, and do not prove much. 
The managers of the mine conjectured that the ash-bed marked the 
site of a pottery kiln, while the hollow in the loam on the east side was 
made by digging out material for the ware. But, to my eyes, the hol- 
low looked more like the work of nature. I rather lean to the opinion 
that the ash-bed indicates a furnace for boiling down the brine of a salt 
spring, and that the pots were used for that purpose. Both theories 
may be correct. 
I see no reason for assigning any very enormous antiquity to these 
relics. Most of them were covered by 5 or 6 feet of loam or less, and 
about the same of yellow, sandy clay and soil. The two last layers ap- 
ear to be a “wash” from the neighboring bills, and may have been 
formed within a century, while three or four hundred years would be 
