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produced by land plants, as. yet altogether unknown to us.. If the Paleozoic was the age of Acrogens, the Eozoic may have been that of Anophytes and Thallophytes. Its plants may have consisted of gigantic mosses and lichens, presenting us with a phase of vegetable existence bearing the same relation to that of the Paleozoic which the latter bears to that of more modern periods. But there is another and a more startling possibility, that the Laurentian may have been the period when vegetable life culminated on our planet, and existed in its highest and grandest forms, before it was brought into subordination to the higher life of the animal. The solution of these questions belongs to the future of geology, and opens up avenues not merely for speculation, but also for practical work.

The above must be regarded as merely a sketch of the present aspect of the subject to which it relates. Details must be sought elsewhere.-Nature.

INDIAN STONE IMPLEMENTS.*

BY J. J. H. GREGORY.

THE stone selected for arrowheads and tomahawk points, was, as a rule, very hard in its nature, compact in structure, and fine grained, presenting a conchoidal fracture when broken. In the valley of the Connecticut these conditions were satisfied by a variety of hornstone, along the sea coast in the porphyry. In each of these localities I have found some arrowheads made of jasper, some of white granular quartz, and occasionally one from slate, but the greater proportion of these are collectively small, though it is evident

*Observations on the Stone used by the Indians within the limits of Massachusetts, in the manufacture of their implements, with some remarks on the process of manufacture, read at the Troy meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

that beauty in the material had attractions. One great source of supply for the jasper and quartz implements, was in part or wholly scattered boulders, while the porphyry came from the ledges on Marblehead Neck, and the small boulders washed up along the coast. That boulders were frequently used is proved from many half formed implements which show some of the rounded surface yet remaining. That the porphyry ledges on Marblehead Neck were an extensive source of supply, is proved by the cart loads of chippings of stone around and in the vicinity of them. That these pieces and fragments were artificially broken is proved by the many conchoidal surfaces, the fresh appearance of the surfaces, and the rough design which some of these present.

That the practice of the aborigines was to cut out but rough designs at the quarry, and work out these designs at their camping grounds, is proved by the large size of the fragments chipped off near these ledges, and the scarcity of even rough designs; while in the town of Marblehead, about a mile from the porphyry ledges on the Neck, the chippings are smaller, and the designs are nearer to completion. In the township of Marblehead I have found a multitude of implements, over a thousand in number, that were broken in every stage of the process of manufacture, while I have rarely found in the Connecticut valley fragments of unfinished implements; such as I have found are usually those of finished implements. The chippings of stone on Marblehead Neck, as I have shown, average quite large; those in the township considerably smaller, and the chippings found in the Connecticut valley are yet smaller.

The hornstones so commonly used for arrowheads and other implements there I have never found in Marblehead, and I have never found among implements of the Connecticut valley any manufactured from the porphyry of Marblehead. In one of the Reports of the Smithsonian Institution is an account of the finding of a mass of half finished imple

ments buried in the ground; such deposits simply prove that the aborigines having cut out rough outlines of implements, at times carried these to their camping ground, and there buried them, to be finished at leisure. I exhibit specimens of a lot that I dug up in Marblehead, on the Freeto farm, about a foot below the surface; such deposits are called "Indian pockets." There were over forty pieces in the lot.

Here is one of a lot of nearly a peck, found in Hadley, Mass. The quantity in every case appeared in each instance to be about equal, apparently limited by the weight one person might conveniently carry. From a study of the breakage we learn that in making their arrowheads and tomahawk points they chipped the stone from the edge towards the centre, which, while it gave a sharp edge, left a central ridge that gave strength to the weapon. In finishing arrowheads there was a great deal of slow, careful work, which finally consisted in breaking off particles almost as fine as dust, by gentle pressure against stone. I had one arrowhead brought to me by a friend from California, made from the bottom of a glass bottle; it was very sharp and exquisitely finished. It was mostly made in his presence by an Indian squaw and nearly three days were spent in its manufacture. It can be safely stated that with the same tools no white man can make an Indian arrowhead; I am informed that even Flint Jack, skilled as he was in the business, after many years of practice, failed in his "Celts," as stone arrowheads are called in England.

From the very few arrowheads made from red jasper, found in Marblehead, I doubt whether the fine ledge of jasper located in Saugus, about five miles distant, was known to the aborigines, as the rich color of the stone, with its fine conchoidal fracture, would have been likely to have made it very popular. The material for the few arrowheads found, made of red jasper, I presume was procured from rocks of the drift deposit. The rocks used by the Indians on the coast in the manufacture of their larger implements, such as

axes, gouges, skin dressers and grain pestles, were greenstone and syenite, and in the Connecticut valley a large portion were made from trap rock. Evidently one reason why the greenstone and syenite were preferred to the porphyry was that these would take the fine finished design far more readily than porphyry. We find the difference between these rocks, illustrated by the ocean worn stones on the beach; while those from trap and greenstone, are as smooth as polished metal. Porphyry stones under the same circumstances, while they have a fine general polish, will yet oftentimes have many minute fractures below the level of the polished surface. These large implements appear to have had their forms first roughly hewn out, then to have been worked into shape by picking with sharp pointed stones after which they were sometimes polished. The axes as a rule were not polished, while the implements used in the dressing of skins were, almost uniformly. Sometimes when the natural form of the material favored, such as fragments of trap rock for pestles and for hoes, but little additional work was put upon it, and the implement was but a rough affair.

Of the large implements, as would be presumed from their character, it is rare to find any that were broken in the process of manufacture, while such as have been marred or broken, after having been manufactured, are very common. It is stated by those who have made a comparison between the large implements of this country and of Europe, that those manufactured by the aborigines of this country are hewn, picked and sometimes polished; those of Europe are simply hewn. This marked difference, if it is a fact, is not so singular as appears at first sight; the material, to a large extent, of the European implements, is flint, which, while it cannot be surpassed as a material for hewing, yet for picking and polishing, would prove very refractory, and it is probable that the same motives that led our own aborigines to avoid the porphyry, led those of Europe to be content

with simply hewing, having to deal with a still more stubborn material in their flint. The skin dressers, gouges and some other implements were made as sharp at the working edges as such stones were capable of, and this was done. by rubbing them on fine grained stones. On the sea coast pieces of the finest grained greenstone were mostly used, some of which, when found, were as much worn as any modern carpenter's hone.

I have never seen among the relics on the sea coast any resembling the scalping knives of the West, or of Europe, or any whose peculiar shape suggested that it might have been used as a scalping knife. I infer from this that on the sea coast the large chippings of stone, having a sharp edge, were used as scalping knives. Among some fifteen hundred specimens of Indian implements, collected on the sea coast, I have never seen more than one, that, from its shape and size could possibly have been used as the conventional tomahawk, an axe shaped weapon to be thrown from the hand. The illustrations in some of our modern school books are more correct when the tomahawk is shown to have been a wooden club terminating in a hard woody knob, in which had been inserted a large stone point.

The form of the metallic axe was doubtless copied from the same implement used by the inhabitants of the stone age. From time to time the metallic axe has varied in form, and all the several forms of stone axes I have in my possession have been represented in some of the forms of the metallic axe, and as that of the standard axe of to-day is precisely that of one of these forms, I cannot doubt but that the stone implement supplied the model.

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