1886.] 305 [Kneeland. 



Dr. C. C. Abbott of Trenton, N. J., read a paper on the habits 

 of the white-footed mouse, Hesperomys leucopus. He had found 

 the mice in October and November occupying, after reconstruction, 

 the abandoned nests of robins, woodthrushes, grosbeaks and cat- 

 birds. 



Prof. William T. Sedgwick showed several simple pieces of appa- 

 ratus and devices in use in the Biological Laboratory of the Insti- 

 tute of Technology, including a convenient, adjustable, alcohol drip 

 for the sledge microtome ; some new methods of preparing and 

 hanging diagrams ; a pamphlet-case and an improved slide-case. 



A fine bust of Agassiz by Henry Dexter, presented by Mrs. 

 Nathaniel Thayer, was shown, and the thanks of the Society voted 

 for the gift. 



General Meeting, April 7, 1886. 



The President, Mr. S. II. Scudder, in the chair. 



Dr. R. R. Andrews read a paper on the development of the 

 teeth, showing a fine series of sections of embryonic teeth in illus- 

 tration. 



Dr. S. Kneeland spoke of some metallic tubes, which formed part 

 of a girdle found around the skeleton in a Fall River grave known 

 as the "skeleton in armor." All the metallic contents of this grave 

 were sent hy Dr. J. V. C. Smith, of Boston, to the Ethnographic 

 Museum of Copenhagen in 1841 and there they still remain. He 

 exhibited three of the more than forty tubes which constituted this 

 girdle, reading the original description from the "Memoirs of the 

 Antiquarian Society of the North," 1840-44. From the burial in 

 a sitting posture, the wrappings, the cedar bark covering, and the 

 absence of any articles of undoubted European manufacture, it 

 seems undeniable that this was the grave of an American Indian, 

 pure or. half breed, and after contact with the whites. The tubes 

 were a little over four inches long, and one- fourth of an inch in 

 diameter, formed around hollow reeds through which were passed 

 strips of raw hide ; the metallic, vegetable, and animal portions 

 were well preserved. As shown by the analyses of Berzelius, and 



PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. VOL. XXIII. 20 NOVEMBER, 1SS6. 



