As the four small mounds just mentioned pertain to the Clifton groups, in the Elk River Valley, we will call attention to one or two of the Charleston group, for the purpose of affording the reader the means of comparison. Below the center of No. 7 (see Plate), sunk into the original earth, was a vault about 8 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. Lying extended on the back in the bottom of this, amid the rotten fragments of a bark coffin, was a decayed human skeleton, fully 7 feet long, with head west. No evidence of fire was to be seen, nor were any stone implements discovered, but lying in a circle just above the hips were fifty circular pieces of white perforated shell, each about 1 inch in diameter and an eighth of an inch thick. The bones of the left arm lay by the side of the body, but those of the right arm, as in one of the mounds heretofore mentioned, were stretched at right angles to the body, reaching out to a small oven-shaped vault, the mortar or cement roof of which was still unbroken. The capacity of this small circular vault was probably two bushels, and the peculiar appearance of the dark-colored deposit therein, and other indications, led to the belief that it had been filled with corn (maize) in the ear. The absence of weapons would indicate that the individual buried here was not a warrior, though a person of some importance. Mound No. 23 of this group presents some peculiarities worthy of notice. It is 312 feet in circumference at the base and 25 feet high, covered with a second growth of timber, some of the stumps of the former growth yet remaining. It is unusually sharp and symmetrical. From the top down the material was found to be a light-gray and apparently mixed earth, so hard as to require the vigorous use of the pick to penetrate it. At the depth of 15 feet the explorers began to find the casts and fragments of poles or round timbers less than a foot in diameter. These casts and rotten remains of wood and bark increased in abundance from this point until the original surface of the ground was reached. By enlarging the lower end of the shaft to 14 feet in diameter it was ascertained that this rotten wood and bark were the remains of what had once been a circular or polygonal, timber-sided, and conical-roofed vault. Many of the timbers of the sides and roof, being considerably longer than necessary, had been allowed to extend beyond the points of support often 8 or 10 feet, those on the sides beyond the crossing and those of the roof downward beyond the wall. Upon the floor and amid the remains of the timber were numerous human bones and also two whole skeletons, the latter but slightly decayed, though badly crushed by the weight pressing on them, but unaccompanied by an ornament or an implement of any kind. A further excavation of about 4 feet below the floor, or what was supposed to be the floor, of this vault, and below the original surface of the