the forest or guiding the plough, than dancing among the keys of a piano-forte. Which of the two is the most honourable and useful employment is not difficult to determine. Let the farmer, therefore, respect this little bird for its useful qualities, in clearing his fruit and forest trees from destructive insects, though it cannot serenade him with its song."

A beautiful account of this little species may be found in Audubon's works.

Specific characters." Length, five and a half inches; extent, seven and a half inches; crown, white, bordered on each side with a band of black, which is again bounded by a line of white passing over each eye; below this is a large spot of black covering the ear feathers; chin and throat, black; wings, the same, crossed transversely by two bars of white; breast and back, streaked with black and white; tail, upper, and also under coverts, black, edged and bordered with white; belly, white; legs, and feet, dirty yellow; hind claw the longest, and all very sharp pointed; bill, a little compressed sidewise, slightly curved, black above, paler below; tongue, long, fine pointed, and horny at the extremity." Wilson.

The female has not the black on the throat.

ARTICLE XXVII.-Additional notes on Aboriginal Antiquities found at Montreal.

(Read before the Natural History Society of Montreal.)

Since the publication of my former paper on this subject,* the excavations on the site of the ancient Indian village, described in that paper, have proceeded to completion, and now the whole of the superficial layer of sand having been removed, the spot has forever lost its original contour and appearance, and little probability remains of farther discoveries. Throughout the past year the progress of the work has been carefully watched, and special excavations have been made in the more promising places. By these means many additional objects have been obtained, some of them of much interest. Mr. E. Murphy, of this Society, has also aided in the work of exploration, and has accumulated a large collection; and I am indebted to Mr. Dand, the overseer in

Canadian Naturalist, vol. 5, p. 430.

charge of the workmen, for several specimens, as well as for pointing out some of the more interesting spots for exploration.

The additional facts obtained do not induce me in any way to modify the statements of my former paper respecting the certainty of this having been the site of an ancient Indian village, and probably of that mentioned by Cartier under the name of Hochelaga. These conclusions are indeed strengthened by the observations more recently made.

The space in which the remains occur extends from Mansfield Street to a little west of Metcalfe Street in one direction, and in the other from a little south of Burnside Place to within 60

yards of Sherbrooke Street. In this limited area, not exceeding two imperial acres, twenty skeletons have been disinterred within twelve months, and the workmen state that many parts of the ground excavated in former years was even more rich in such remains. Hundreds of old fire places, and indications of at least ten or twelve huts or lodges have also been found, and in a few instances these occur over the burial places, as if one generation had built its huts over the graves of another. Where habitations have stood, the ground is in some places to the depth of three feet, a black mass saturated with carbonaceous matter, and full of bones of wild animals, charcoal, pottery, and remains of implements of stone or bone. Farther, in such places the black soil is laminated, as if deposited in successive layers on the more depressed parts of the surface. The length of time during which the site was occupied, is also indicated by the very different states of preservation of the bones and bone implements; some of those in the deeper parts of the deposit being apparently much older than those nearer the surface. Similar testimony is afforded by the great quantity and various patterns of the pottery, as well as by the abundance of the remains of animals used as food, throughout the area above mentioned.

All these indications point to a long residence of the aborigines on this spot, while the almost entire absence of articles of European manufacture in the undisturbed portions of the ground, implies a date coeval with the discovery of the country. The few objects of this kind found in circumstances which prevented the supposition of mere superficial intermixture, are just sufficient to shew that the village existed until the appearance of Europeans on the stage. Other facts bearing on these points will appear in

the course of the following detailed notice of the objects found since the publication of my former paper.

1. Human Remains.-Several additional skulls have been disinterred, but many of them in a state too fragile for preservation. All are of the same type of cranial conformation with those previously described. The measurements of five of the most perfect are as follows:

The others are in my

No. 4 is in Mr. Guilbault's collection. possession. Nos. 5 and 6 belonged to a female and male skeleton buried together.. They have the Wormian bones largely developed, which is not the case with the others. No. 8 is remarkable for a lateral distortion which seems in part to have existed during life, but must have been increased by the pressure of the soil after the decay of the soft parts.

I have been very desirous to ascertain if the measurements of the skulls were capable of throwing any light on the question of the particular Indian race to which these people belonged. Prof. Wilson of Toronto, has kindly furnished for the purposes of this comparison, the following table, presenting the average measurements of about forty Huron skulls, and of about thirty believed to be Algonquin.

Huron.

Length,...... 7.37 inches.

Algonquin. 7.23 inches.

From this it would appear that the Algonquin skull is shorter, broader and lower than that of the Huron. The measurements of skulls from Hochelaga,given in this and my previous paper, present so great diversities among themselves, that any comparison with the averages above stated would seem impossible. Nos. 3, 4 and 8, approach very nearly to the Algonquin type; Nos. 6 and 7 to the Huron. No. 7 is remarkable for its length, and contrasts in

this respect very strongly with No. 4. Either the cranial type of the Hochelaga tribe presented within itself much greater diversities than those indicated by Prof. Wilson's averages, or the individuals whose remains have been found, belonged to more than one tribe. In either case a much larger number of skulls would be required to give satisfactory data for comparison; and it would then perhaps be possible to eliminate abnormal forms and those which might be of foreign origin. Nor must the consideration be omitted, that in a central locality, at the confluence of two great rivers, and at a time when Hochelaga may have been the point of union of various tribes, giving way before the inroads of the Iroquois and Hurons, its population may have been of a very mixed character.

The following remarks on the deformed skull noticed above, are from a paper by Dr. Wilson, in the Canadian Journal of September:

"In an interesting paper on "Aboriginal Antiquities recently discovered in the Island of Montreal," published by Dr. Dawson in the "Canadian Naturalist," he has given a description of one female and two male skulls, found along with many human bones, at the base of the Montreal Mountain, on a site which he identifies with much probability, as that of the ancient Hochelaga, an Indian Village visited by Cartier in 1535; and which he assigns on less satisfactory evidence to an Algonquin tribe. Since the publication of that paper, my attention has been directed by Dr. Dawson to two other skulls, a male and female, discovered on the same spot, both of which are now in the Museum of McGill College, Montreal. One of these furnishes a still more striking example of a cranium greatly altered from its original shape subsequent to interment. It is the skull of a man about forty years of age, approximating to the common proportions of the Iroquois and Algonquin cranium, but with very marked lateral distortion, accompanied with flattening on the left, and bulging out on the right side. There is also an abnormal configuration of the occiput, suggestive at first sight, of the effects produced by the familiar native process of artificial malformation. This tends to add, in no slight degree, to the interest which attaches to the investigation of such illustrations of abnormal craniology; as the occurrence of well established examples of posthumous deformation among crania purposely modified by artificial means exhibits in a striking manner the peculiar difficulties which complicate the

investigations of the naturalist when dealing with man. The evidence which places beyond doubt the posthumous origin of the distorsion in this Hochelaga skull is of the same nature as that which has already been accepted in relation to an example recovered from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Stone, in Buckinghamshire. The forehead is flattened and greatly depressed on the right side, and this recedes so far, owing to the distorsion of the whole cranium, that the right external annular process of the frontal bone is nearly an inch behind that of the left side. The skull recedes proportionally on the same side throughout, with considerable lateral development at the parietal protuberance, and irregular posterior projection on the right side of the occiput. The right superior maxillary and malar bones are detached from the calvarium, but the nasal bones and the left maxillary remain in situ, exhibiting, in the former, evidence of the well developed and prominent nose characteristic of Indian physiognomy. The bones of the calvarium, with one slight exception, have retained their coherence, notwithstanding the great distorsion to which it has been subjected, though in this example ossification has not begun at any of the sutures. The exception referred to is in the left temporal bone, which is so far partially displaced as to have detached the upper edge of the squamous suture. Part also of the base of the skull is wanting.

"The posthumous origin of the distorsion of this skull is proved beyond dispute on replacing the condyles of the lower jaw in apposition with the glenoid cavities, when it is found that, instead of the front teeth meeting the corresponding ones of the upper maxillary, the lower right and left incisors both impinge on the first right canine tooth, and the remaining teeth are thereby so displaced from their normal relation to those of the upper jaw, as to preclude the possibility of their answering the purpose of mastication-which their worn condition proves them to have done, had they occupied the same relative position during life.

"The extreme distorsion which this skull has undergone is still more apparent when looking on it at its base. The bone has been fractured, and portions of it have become detached under the pressure, while the mastoid processes are twisted obliquely, so that the left one is upward of an inch in advance of the right.

"The circumstances under which this Indian skull was found tend to throw some light on the probable process by which its posthumous malformation was effected. It was covered by little