Page:Anthropology.djvu/93

92 in the rock from the very place where the ancient stonecutter left his rude and unfinished work." Allusion to these so called soapstone excavations and pottery is made in the second biennial report on the Geology of Alabama, by Professor Tourney, 1858, and also in the first report of the Progress of Geological Survey of Alabama, by Dr. E. Smith, 1874, pages, 86, 94, and 118. The rock from which this specimen has been quarried is rather a fibrous serpentine, intermixed partly with an asbestoid actinite than a soapstone. A stone chisel has, according to the statement of Dr. Johnston, been found in the soapstone quarries, and was undoubtedly an instrument used in cutting and dressing the vessels, and is of a porphyritic or dioritic rock foreign to the geological formation in that section.

I found a peculiar tablet of indurated ferruginous clay, the straight lines along the margin of which would lead one to think that it was used for a tally, worn around the neck suspended by a string. It was found in an old field on the western shore of Mobile Bay, near Magnolia race course. In this county two kinds of shell-banks or shell-mounds are met with.

The first are situated in the low marshes of the delta of Mobile River, first recognized as artificial accumulations of shells, and described as the gnathodon beds by Professor Tourney in his second biennial report on Geology of Alabama, 1858. He mentions the same at the time of his visit extending over several acres of ground, and some with an elevation of from 10 to 20 feet, presenting the shape of truncated cones, covered with a growth of native forest trees. These beds are almost entirely made of the shells of Gnathodon cuneatus, but in some quantities of stone of Cyrena carolinensis and the Neritina reclivata have served in a less degree to swell those accumulations 5 together with these, charcoal, ashes, and the bones of birds and animals are found. Relics of the handicraft of the builders of these shell-mounds are almost unknown. Professor Tourney speaks of an instrument cut from the shell of the Pyrula ficus which he found 10 feet below the surface, and of scarce fragments of pottery. These beds are, at this day, almost all levelled to the ground, and are rapidly disappearing, many having been appropriated as excellent sites for market gardens, and vast quantities of shells have been, and are still, removed for the construction of our shell-roads. The time is rapidly approaching when scarce any vestige will be left of them, and it is therefore most to be wished that the little of what yet remains should be closely investigated, and a minute account be put upon permanent record.

The other shell-banks are situated on the eastern and western shores of Mobile Bay, and along the coast of the Mississippi sound to the mouth of the Pascagoula. They are all above tide- water on dry land, contiguous to the extensive oyster beds in these waters, and composed exclusively of the oyster. The most interesting and the most extensive of these accumulations made by the ancient Ostreaphagi is found on the