Ancient Indian Refuse Heaps. 35 



Ancient Indian kitchen middens may be said to be found 

 along the entire Atlantic coast line of the American con- 

 tinent. With reference to the region now under consideration, 

 they are found on the shores and islands of the Bay of Fundy, 

 and other portions of the coasts of New Brunswick, and the 

 adjoining State of Maine; the conditions of the animal 

 remains indicating in some instances considerable antiquity, 

 whereas the shells in other cases point to more recent interments. 

 I examined several of these heaps on the islands in the Bay 

 of Fundy, and along the fiord of the St. Croix River for many 

 miles. Although a large number had evidently been levelled 

 and utilized for top-dressing, enough remain to show that, 

 whether as articles of food, bait, or both, the aboriginal 

 races collected vast quantities of the well-known clam, and 

 qua-hog, besides two species of oyster {O.borealis et Virginiana), 

 and the common forms of Natica crepidula solen, etc., the 

 debris of which strew the coasts of several of the inlets in the 

 Bay of Fundy, their numbers evincing the profusion of each 

 species. It has, however, been asserted by no less an authority 

 than Dr. Gould, that all, especially the three first species, are 

 becoming rapidly extinct north of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.* 



It is likewise stated that their disappearance has been in 

 part, or altogether, owing to the saw mills in the vicinity of 

 the beds, and that the clams, once plentiful in situations on 

 the coast of Maine, have vanished since the lumber mills were 

 erected in their neighbourhood. Whatever may be the cause, 

 there is certainly something remarkable in the decadence of 

 this shell-fish, as I shall also have occasion presently to observe 

 of a duck which frequented the same area. Mr. Wyman, in 

 1867, examined several shell heaps near Portland, in Maine, 

 and in Massachusetts, when he found stone and bone imple- 



* " Mollusca of Massachusetts," and Sewall's " Ancient Dominions : " 

 also Hitchcock's Report, " Scientific Survey of the State of Maine, i860," 

 p. 292. It is worthy of notice that drifted shells of the O. borealis are 

 met with in abundance on the shores of Sable Island, in the Gulf of the 

 St. Lawrence, as I am informed by Dr. Gilpin, of Halifax, Nova Scotia. 



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