26 
THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
Indian Funeral Trees. 
REMARKABLE specimen of the 
red cedar was recently un¬ 
earthed by the opening- of the 
Metzg-ar Indian Mound, on 
Deer Creek, near Yellow Bud, in Ohio. 
A larg-e bed of ashes a quarter of an 
inch in thickness, covered a space of 
about ten feet by six. Near the edge 
of this ash bed a large log was found. It 
was about five and a quarter feet in 
circumference, and as sound as if buried 
but a few years ago. The side branches 
had been cut away from the log, and 
one of the scars was so perfect that the 
marks of the stone axes used in the 
work are plainly discernible. There 
are no cedar trees now growing nearer 
than ten miles from that immediate 
neighborhood, and none were there 
growing when the early settlers came’ 
so that the trees must have disap¬ 
peared from there long ago in the past 
or the improbable alternative accepted 
that the log was brought from a long 
distance. Evidence was furnished that 
the log was originally about eighteen 
feet long. Right beneath the log was 
a skeleton of a human being. A small 
pen had been made of small cedar sap¬ 
lings, arranged in the form of a tepee 
around the large log. The skeleton 
was about two feet below the original 
surface of the ground, and the earth 
forming the mound over the skeleton 
had a depth of about thirty-four feet 
from the summit. The earth to form 
the mound had evidently been brought 
in baskets by manual labor, as the 
“dumps” in some cases, formed by dif¬ 
ferent tinted materials, could be dis¬ 
tinctly seen. The circumstances fav¬ 
orable to the preservation of the cedar 
log had evidently aided in preserving 
the skeleton, and it is possible the 
size of the log had some relation to a 
distinguished personage. The body 
had been laid straight under the log, 
with legs extended and arms at the 
sides. Around each wrist were two 
bracelets, made of native copper, and 
several hundi-ed shell beads were 
around the neck and on the chest. It 
is believed that the dry ashes with 
which the body had been covered, in 
addition to the great depth from the 
surface, had aided in preserving the 
log as well as the human remains. 
Even traces of hair were found a,round 
the skull, as well as dried and shriv¬ 
eled portions of the brain were found, 
while rude clothing and matting, as 
well as buckskin, put over the corpse 
before the ashes, were in a fair state of 
preservation. As the use of the cedar 
log- would seem to have been a matter 
of choice, it opens a new field for spec¬ 
ulation as to the possibility of the tree 
having had some special significance in 
the funeral ceremonies of the Mound 
Builders A section of the log has been 
secured for the museum of the Acad¬ 
emy of Natural Sciences, of Philadel¬ 
phia—the exploration, indeed, having 
been made under the auspices of that 
body. 
—Scientific American. 
Amethysts are widely distributed 
in the United States, being found in 
New England, in the Lake Superior 
region, in Virginia and North Carolina, 
in Georgia and several of the Western 
mining states. Some specimens dis¬ 
covered in Connecticut rival in color 
and lustre the best variety of the 
oriental gem. 
Very fine specimens of the chryso- 
beryl a stone almost equal in brillaney 
to the yellow diamond, have been 
found in New York, Virginia, North 
Carolina and Georgia. 
