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 over an immense tract of country from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Rockies to the Atlantic, but are specially frequent in the valley of the Mississippi, along its left tributaries, in Arkansas, Kansas and the basin of the Ohio. But the old theory that the mound-builders were a distinct race of highly civilized agriculturists, who had lived from remote antiquity in the regions of the mounds and were eventually exterminated by the nomadic hordes coming from the northward, represented to-day by the present Indians, is no longer supported by the principal American ethnologists, who hold that the Indians are their descendants.

In Ohio there are thousands of mounds, some in the form of circles, others four-sided, and in a few cases eight-sided. Sometimes a square and a circle are united. Altar-mounds, small rounded heaps of earth, are found in Ohio. At their centre is a basin-shaped mass of hard clay showing effects of fire. These basins are 3 or 4 ft. across, and contain ashes and charcoal. Upon these altars are found many objects.

The most famous mound in Ohio is the “Great-Serpent,” in Adams county. It lies upon a narrow ridge between three streams which unite. It is a gigantic serpent made in earth. Across the widely-opened jaws it measures 75 ft.; the body just behind the head measures 30 ft. across and is 5 ft. high; and, following the curves, the length is 1348 ft. The tail is in a triple coil. In front of the monster is an elliptical enclosure with a heap of stones at its centre. Beyond this is a form somewhat indistinct, thought by some to be a frog.

In Wisconsin the most interesting mounds are the effigy mounds—earthen forms of mammals, birds and reptiles—usually in groups and of gigantic size. Among them are buffalo, moose, elk, deer, fox, wolf, panther and lynx. Some panthers have tails 350 ft. long, and some eagles measure 1000 ft. from tip to tip of outspread wings. Occasionally the figures are cut or sunk in the earth, and near them are hundreds of simple burial mounds. It seems most probable that the purpose of these effigy mounds are totemic, and that they were objects of worship as guardians of the villages.

Further south in west Tennessee another class of mound is found. This contains graves made of slabs of stone set on edge. The simplest have six stones, two at the sides, two at the ends, one at the top and one at the bottom. Sometimes there is one of these graves in a mound, sometimes many. In one, 12 m. from Nashville, 45 ft. across and 12 ft. high, were found a hundred skeletons, mostly in stone graves ranged one above the other. The skeletons in the upper graves had been buried stretched at full length. The lower graves were short and square, and the bones in them had been cleaned and piled in little heaps.

The mound-builders were Stone-Age men, and made many beautiful objects of stone, shell, bone and beaten metals, but they had no knowledge of smelting. That they were not one race is proved by a study of the skulls from the mounds.

MOUNDSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Marshall county, West Virginia, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, 12 m. S. of Wheeling. Pop. (1900) 5632; (1910) 8918. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, by an electric line to Wheeling, and by boats to Pittsburg, Cincinnati and intermediate ports. Near Moundsville, at the mouth of Grave Creek, is Grave Creek Mound, one of the largest relics of the “American mound-builders”; it is in the form of a regular cone, and is about 320 ft. in diameter at the base and 70 ft. in height. Two sepulchral chambers were discovered in it in 1838. In the upper chamber, about half-way between the centre of the base and the apex, was a single skeleton, adorned with beads, copper bracelets and plates of mica; in the lower chamber, directly under the upper and partly in the natural earth, were two skeletons, one adorned with beads and the other without ornament. On the sides and top of the lower chamber was a framework of timbers, which seems to indicate that the mound is of comparatively recent date. The city of Moundsville was formed in 1866 by the consolidation of the town of Moundsville (laid out on the Ohio river in 1831, and incorporated in 1832), and the town of Elizabethtown (laid out, about m. from the river, in 1798, and incorporated. in 1830).

MOUNET-SULLY, JEAN (1841–), French actor, was born at Bergerac, on the 28th of February, 1841. He entered the Conservatoire at the age of twenty-one, and took the first prize for tragedy. In 1868 he made his début at the Odéon without attracting much attention. His career was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, and the liking he developed for soldiering had almost decided him to give up the stage, when he was offered the opportunity of playing the part of Oreste in Racine’s Andromaque at the Comédie Française in 1872. His striking presence and voice and the passionate vigour of his acting made an immediate impression, and the eventual result was his election as sociétaire in 1874. He became one of the mainstays of the Comédie Française, and distinguished himself in a great variety of tragic and romantic parts. Perhaps his most famous impersonation was that of Oedipus in L’Oedipe roi, a French version by Jules Lacroix of Sophocles’s drama. This was first performed in the old Roman amphitheatre at Orange in 1888. Other prominent parts in Mounet-Sully’s répertoire were Achille in Racine’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Hippolyte in Phèdre, Hamlet, the title parts in Victor Hugo’s Hernani and Ruy Blas, Francis I. in Le Roi s’amuse, and Didier in Marion Delorme. He was created chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1889. He also wrote a play, La Buveuse de larmes, and in 1906, in collaboration with Pierre Barbier, La Vieillesse de Don Juan in verse.

MOUNIER, JEAN JOSEPH (1758–1806), French politician, was born at Grenoble (Isère) on the 12th of November 1758. He studied law, and in 1783 obtained a judgeship at Grenoble. He took part in the struggle between the parlements and the court in 1788, and promoted the meeting of the estates of Dauphiné at Vizille (July 20, 1788), which on the eve of the Revolution created an immense stir. He was secretary of this assembly, and drafted the cahiers of grievances and remonstrances presented by it to the king. Thus brought into prominence, Mounier was unanimously elected deputy of the third estate to the states general of 1789. There, and in the Constituent Assembly, he was at first an upholder of the new ideas, pronouncing himself in favour of the union of the Third Estate with the two privileged orders, proposing the famous oath of the Tennis Court, assisting in the preparation of the new constitution, and demanding the return of Necker. On the 28th of September 1789 he was elected president of the Constituent Assembly. Being unable, however, to approve the proceedings which followed, Mounier withdrew to Dauphiné, gave in his resignation as deputy, and, becoming suspect, took refuge in Switzerland in 1790. He returned to France in 1801, was named by Bonaparte prefect of the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, which he reorganized, and in 1805 was appointed councillor of state. He died in Paris on the 28th of January 1806. His principal writings are Considérations sur les gouvernements (1789); Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français de devenir libres (1792), and De l’Influence attribuée aux philosophes, aux francs-maçons et aux illuminés sur la révolution de la France (1801).

MOUNT, WILLIAM SIDNEY (1807–1868), American artist, was born at Setauket, Long Island, New York, on the 26th of November 1807. He studied in the schools of the National Academy of Design, New York, and in 1832 was made a full Academician. Among his better-known works are “Turning