304 The American Naturalist. [April, 
again. They havea notion that the devil (Chinde) long haunts 
the locality where death has taken place, and they all shun it 
After a burial the burial party thoroughly wash themselves and- 
make a complete change of clothing. Often wolves or other 
wild animals may succeed in getting at a body thus placed in a 
rocky cleft, and, pulling it dut, devour it, and the bones subse- 
quently come to be scattered about in the neighborhood of the 
grave. This has led many to believe that the Navajos are.care- — 
less of their dead, though there is no truth in this. A few years 
ago I remembered very well the danger that attended my efforts 
to secure a few Navajo skulls for Professor Sir William Turner, 
of the University of Edinburgh. It came to the ears of these 
Indians in the vicinity, and I was repeatedly cautioned not to 
make the attempt to carry out my designs. 
On another occasion I was at the Navajo agency, Fort Defiance, 
in Northwestern New Mexico, and while there I learned that 
some fifty or sixty of these Indians had been buried at different 
times, extending over many years, in a kind of a cave up among 
the rocks of aneighboring cafion. I postponed my investigation 
of the place until daylight of the last day of my stay there, not 
breathing my plans to any one’in the interim. With a large bag 
rolled up under my arm, and my ambulance awaiting my return 
atthe entrance of the gorge, I climbed up to the place in a blind- 
ing snowstorm. Notwithstanding all my precautions, however, 
my reputation had gone ahead of me, and I found armed Indians 
posted in several localities, evidently there to resist my depreda- 
tions at any hazard. They showed their agitation upon a 
approach, and I returned unsuccessful. Skulls of these Indians 
were, nevertheless, secured by me at a later date, and are now 1m 
the anatomical museum at the Edinburgh University. Se 
Secondly, we may have what I will call here the brush burial, ee 
and it is resorted to principally in those cases where illness has 
been long and protracted and no hope for recovery is enterrat 
The patient is then taken out of the hogan, especially if P ge 
she be old in years, and is carried to some secluded spot 1# the 
vicinity of their camp. Here the sufferer is densely surrounc®” 
with brush-cuttings as a protection against wild animals, and $ 
