I wish to notify correspondents that I have no more coins to exchange, but I will exchange ores and minerals of different kinds, petrified wood, curiosities from the Mammoth Cave and from Colorado, Indian arrow-heads, shells, and foreign postage stamps, for all kinds of American coins.
Will B. Shober,
Cumberland, Md.
We have many ancient artificial mounds in this part of Illinois, which contain pottery, stone pipes, axes, and other things, and the Indians while here used them for burial-places, but always would say they did not know who built them, but that it was not any of their race, but another people. There are persons yet living here who talked with the Indians about the mounds before they went away, fifty years ago. These mounds appear to have been burial-places for both the people who built them and for the Indians. They certainly contain Indian relics, and they also contain many other things, such as stone axes, and oval, concave, convex, and curiously formed stones, which the Indians declare they never used. Most of the bluffs along the Illinois River contain relics, and not long since I saw a skeleton on one of the highest ones, which had become partly exposed. It was of gigantic size.
I will exchange pieces of Indian or Mound-Builders' pottery, and arrow-heads, for sea-shells and ocean curiosities.
A. W. Taylor,
Mount Sterling, Brown Co., Ill.
I would like to exchange a portion of a genuine Sioux scalp-lock, with a piece of ermine attached, given me by a Crow chief from Montana, for foreign postage stamps, especially those of Ceylon, Africa, and Brazil.
W. S. Canfield,
1224 Fourteenth St. N. W., Washington, D. C.
Detroit, Minnesota.