VI.
Cotuit Port is in the town of Barnstable, on the south side of Cape Cod, and on the northern shore of a narrow bay. It is quite near to the sea, but protected from it by a narrow spit of land, which forms a natural breakwater across the bay at its mouth. Within the distance of a few miles, a large number of shell-heaps are met with, and have been estimated to cover hundreds of acres, sometimes having a thickness of between one and two feet, and at others of only a few inches. Oysters were formerly found in the bay in much larger quantities than at present, and doubtless formed one of the chief attractions which drew the Indians to this place. Our examinations were confined chiefly to one of the larger deposits, about a mile to the eastward of the village, situated on a sloping surface with a pleasant southerly exposure. Excavations by four persons during a whole day were made near the shore, and at various points inland, and brought to light the shells of the oyster, clam, scallop, and quahog, in large numbers, but quite unequally distributed; the clam being plentiful in some places, the quahog in others, and the scallop in others, while the oyster abounded everywhere.
Two species of Pyrula, viz.: P. carica and P. canaliculata were found, the first in considerable numbers. Neither of these species was found in any of the other heaps. Dr. Gould states that they are not known to exist north of Cape Cod. The largest specimen of the P. carica was about seven inches in length, a portion of the spire having been broken off, and this, according to Dr. Gould, is their maximum size on the Coast of Massachusetts. It is, however, in remarkable contrast with a shell of the same species from one of the shell-heaps in Florida, which measured nearly fourteen inches in length.
Of the remains of vertebrates, the bones of the deer were the most abundant; but those of the seal, the fox, the mink, of birds, including those of a duck and the wild turkey, of turtle and of fish were found. During a former examination of this locality by Mr. George G. Lowell and Dr. Algernon Coolidge, a canine of a bear and a part of the skull of a cat was obtained. No stone implements, but a few worked pieces of bone were dug up, and also some fragments from which portions had been sawed off. The tine of a deer’s antler, from which the tip had been sawed off, is represented on [Pl. 15], fig. 14. About two-thirds of the metatarsal bone of the great toe from a human foot was found, in company with the bones of the animals already mentioned, and is the only portion of the skeleton of man which we have discovered while examining the heaps here described. The writer would express his obligations to Mr. George G. Lowell for the opportunity of examining the locality at Cotuit Port, and for the gift of valuable specimens.