As indicated by decided family resemblances, the wares of this group extend over the greater part of the States of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, cover large portions of Mississippi, Kentucky, and Illinois, and reach somewhat into Iowa, Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. The types are better marked and the products more abundant about the center of this area, which may be defined roughly as including contiguous parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee, with a pretty decided focal center, at least in the abundance of relics, at Pecan Point, Arkansas. The borders of the district are necessarily not clearly defined. The characters of the art products blend more or less with those of neighboring sections. This is a usual phenomenon, and is probably due to a variety of causes. The mere contact of peoples leads to the exchange of ideas, and, consequently, to similarities in the products of industry. A change of habitat, with its consequent change of environment, is capable of modifying art to a great extent. Groups of relics and remains attributed by archæologists to distinct stocks of people, may, in cases, be the work of one and the same people executed under the influence of different environments and at widely separated periods of time. Mixed conditions in the remains of a locality are often due to the presence of different peoples, synchronously or otherwise. This occurs in many places on the outskirts of this district, a good illustration being found in East Tennessee, where three or four distinct groups of ware are intermingled. As would naturally be expected, the distribution is governed somewhat by the great water-ways, and pottery of this province is found far up the Ohio, Tennessee, and Arkansas Rivers. HOW FOUND.--All peoples have resorted, at some period of their history, to the practice of burying articles of use or value with the dead. It is to this custom that we owe the preservation of so many entire pieces of these fragile utensils. They are exhumed from burial mounds in great numbers, and to an equal extent, perhaps, from simple, unmarked graves which are constantly being brought to light by the plowshare. Fragmentary ware is found also in refuse heaps, on house and village sites, and scattered broadcast over the face of the land.