humb-scrapers," which
outnumber all other specimens.

MOUTH OF MOSQUITO CREEK

Four miles east of Troy, on a ridge so steep that its top is
inaccessible from either side, and so narrow that a wagon would make a
track on each slope, is a little mound worn down until its true nature
would not be suspected. Dr. Dinsmore was on this ridge one day and
noticed a flat limestone rock. Knowing that it had no place in the
loess, he began digging to ascertain the reason for it being there. At
a depth of a few inches he found bones, and soon unearthed a number of
skulls, with only his hands or a stick. Coming back later with tools,
he found, in all, 56 skulls. Afterwards he found others, and persons
in the neighborhood have exhumed many more. The deposit represents a
communal burial, from a village which probably stood on the level
creek bottom not far away. A few skeletons showed an attempt at
orderly arrangement. These were probably of individuals who had not
been dead long at the time of the general burial. Most of the bones,
however, skulls and others, were piled in the smallest possible area,
as if gathered up in sacks or baskets from previous burials and
carried here for reinterment. The soil is so loose as to be easily dug
with the hands, like sand; but at the same time so fine and close
packed as to shed water almost like a roof. Owing to the steep slope
at every point, except toward the summit of the ridge, there must be
some erosion, and consequently the age of the burials can not be
great. Yet, the same conditions prevail in other places where a great
antiquity is claimed for the remains. Frost necessarily disintegrates
the soil to some extent; the wind or rain carries away the loosened
portions; and this process is continuous. The shape of the mound shows
that when the burials were made the ridge was essentially identical in
form with its present aspect. The bones also are comparatively fresh
in appearance, and it may be considered certain that they can not date
back many generations.

On the top of a hill rising from the opposite side of Mosquito Creek
Dr. Dinsmore found a low mound, which, like that just described, would
not have been suspected as such but for a stone projecting from the
surface. Under this stone, with 8 inches of earth intervening, was a
skull so completely mineralized that it appears to be carved from a
block of limestone. No other portions of the body to which it belonged
remained, though tra