606 The American Naturalist. [July, 
bean-shaped, shell heap 573 feet in length, with a maximum 
breadth of base of 233 feet. The height is somewhat irregu- 
lar, averaging about eight feet from the surrounding level, 
though the shell deposit is found sunk deep into the marshy 
soil. Excavations at various points yielded nothing of inter- 
est. 
SHELL RIDGES, TICK ISLAND. 
About a quarter of a mile south of the bean-shaped shell 
heap lie acres of shell ridges inadequately investigated by the 
writer. Upon one of these ridges are the remnants of a live 
oak, now destroyed by fire, but growing at the time of the 
writer’s first visit and then measured by him. Taken at a 
point five feet from the base the circumference was sixteen feet 
or twenty-three feet, three feet from the base over projecting 
knots. At a distance of twelve feet from the trunk of this 
tree an excavation, 7 ft. by 4 ft., converging to a depth of 9 ft., 
was made. After 1 ft. 6 in. of humus, shell was reached. 
From the start fragments of pottery were found in great abun- 
dance, the ornamented outnumbering the plain. It was rude 
and thick in character, made from clay through which vege- 
table fibre, destroyed in the process of baking, had left minute 
canals. To overcome a too porous character, it had been, pre- 
vious to baking, thinly coated with clay on the outside. The 
clay contained no admixture of pounded shell or of gravel, 
which is rarely if ever met with in the shell heaps of the St. 
John’s. The manner of ornamentation mainly consisted of 
straight lines in various combinations asshown. Many pieces 
in addition had indentations in connection with lines, as fig- 
ured by Wyman; while the marking of others consisted of 
series of concentric circles of increasing size. 
At a depth of 7 ft. 6 in—a depth sufficient to clearly prove 
its contemporary origin with the shell heap—was found a 
fragment of ornamented pottery, with a turned lip; the only 
 JBy “lip” the writer means a turning out at one point of the upper margin through 
which fluid may pass, and not a turned rim encircling the pot. Such turned rims are 
by no means uncommon. It is taken for granted that Professor Wyman meant to 
express the same idea in the use of the word * lip.” 
