has to be done will be seen. To attempt to do this and to throw off long chips from the sharp edge of the flake would prove a failure, as its sharp edge would either crumble away or it would cut and injure the point of the bone flaker without throwing off the desired chip or flake. Experience has taught the operator the best shape of edge to apply the pressure to accomplish his object, and it has also taught him how to reach it in the simplest possible way. A spoon-shaped hollow on the top of a flattened log, or even a gutter or groove cut in it, furnishes the means of holding the flake firmly, the raised or high side placed in the hollow, the flat side up; with the ends of the fingers of his left hand pressed on it he holds it firmly, while with his right hand a downward pressure is given by the flaking tool which breaks off chips with a fracture of about 45 degrees from the flat surface, leaving the edge in the best possible shape for future work, and that is the condition of these cache flakes as they are found.

In old times, before the invention and introduction of planing and shaping machines to work metals, the first and most important lesson taught to the machinist's apprentice was the use of the hand-hammer and cold-chisel. When an outer shell was to be removed from a metal casting and its surface left in condition to be finished by file or scraper, the smoothness and regularity of that surface was essential, not only for economy in working, but accuracy of the file finish. The apprentice was taught to hold his cold-chisel and so direct the strokes of his ham mer that when a chip was started the chisel should hold to it, and not be allowed to cut too deep or slip and fly out, leaving a shape that is difficult to start a fresh cut without leaving ridges or cutting deeper, in either case causing additional labor for the finisher.

To a practical mechanic the examination of such a flint workshop as I have described-its waste chips to the partly worked flakes, the roughed out blocks, and the finished implements-reveal a line of workmanship so clear that it can be followed to the production of the same results.

The handling of the tool and flake to form an arrow-point is as much an act requiring exactness and precision as the handling the cold-chisel and hammer is to the machinist. The first chip thrown off is analogous to the first starting work of the cold-chisel; it is the text that must be adhered to to the end of the chapter. Holding the flake in such position that commencing at what is intended for the point of the intended work, the pressure with the flaking point is brought to bear close to the edge of the 45 degrees angle and at right angles to it; the result is a flake thrown off inclining towards the stem end of the arrow-point. In sectional sketch Fig. 4 from a to a' shows the 45 degrees angle left by the first rough shaping from c to c' the direction of the first chip thrown off. The seat left by this chip when thrown off is concave on the edge of the flake, the advance corner of which is the seating point for the tool to throw off the next chip, which does not entirely obliterate the concave of the first, and the following chip leaves a serrated edge, the chips or

flakes being generally parallel, which is the object of a good workman to make them. When the flat side by chipping has been reduced to nearly the required form, its edges are in the best possible shape for chipping the opposite or high side, then by alternate working from side to side the point is finished, either leaving it with serrated edges or by after delicate work throwing off the points, leaving a smooth, sharp edge. The indentations at the base either for barbs or for thongs to secure the point to its shaft are made by direct down pressure of a sharp point working alternately from side to side, the arrow-point being held firmly on its flat face. From the narrowness of the cuts in some of the speci mens, and the thickness of the stone where they terminate, I have inclined to the belief that at the period they were made, the aborigines had something stronger than bone to operate with, as I have never been able to imitate some of their deep, heavy cuts with it; but I have succeeded by using a copper point, which possesses all the properties of the bone, in holding to its work without slipping and has the strength for direct thrust required. A soft iron or thoroughly annealed steel point answers even a better purpose. As yet no copper has been found on this flaking ground, though a few copper beads and remnants of what appear to have been ornaments have been taken from mounds on the ridges of the Saline, which I think is evidence that they had that metal at the earliest time work was done on this flaking bank.

Bryce Wright in his description of the Scandinavian knives or daggers refers to them as being most beautifully dentilled with parallel flaking and serrated edges. He says: "These knives or lances are true marvels of pre-historic art, and show an amount of skill and workmanship which cannot be imitated in the present age, the art of fashioning them having been entirely lost." Sir John Lubbock, on page 104 of "Prehistoric Times," says: "The crimping along the edge of the handle is very curious." As to parallel flakings with serrated edge, I have endeavored to show (from a mechanical stand-point) that the refuse of the great flint quarries points to a mode of working that must leave the dentilled markings parallel, and the edges worked from, serrated. What Lubbock speaks of as curious crimping on the edge of the handles is but the natural result of the mode of working I have examined these Scandinavian dagger handles, and find the same appearance on the blades of large-size broken piercers, numbers of which I have found among the rubbish, picked up, examined, and thrown away as imperfect specimens. Some of them have a spread, flat end or handle of over 14 inch, with nearly square blades, evidently having been worked by down pressure from the edges corresponding to the spread end, these 45 degrees flakes meeting form angles and produce the square. The interlocking of the flakes at their meeting causes the crimped appearance, in some cases not unlike a row of beads, very beautiful, but not made with any such view, but simply the natural result of the mode of working.

Here also are found massive flakes or chips of fine-grained quartzite, that teach another lesson to a seeking practical mechanic, nosing about among the accumulated refuse. These flakes are often rough on one face, showing them to be an outside scale from the stone; occasionally, fragments of large flat implements that have been classed as agricult ural (hoes or spades). These fragments have not been broken by want of skill in the workmen, but from undiscovered seams in the stone that did not show until the outer surface was thrown off. None of these fragments show any sign of use; in fact, some of them have not been wrought to an edge. I have several specimens of hoes from the same ridge beyond the settlement where it would naturally be cultivated, that from their highly polished working ends show long use. The lesson is that they are not made from great flakes, but rather represent the core from which flakes have been thrown off. Finished hoes and spades frequently have portions of natural stone partings that have not been worked off, and show them to have been worked from thin slabs. These slabs are a metamorphic thin bedded sandstone, belonging to what our State geologist, Prof. A. H. Worthen, calls the Chester group. They occur near the Saline, about 8 miles above the flaking ground, in an upheaval that has brought them to the surface with the upturned edges of the carboniferous limestone through which the salt springs flow. This is probably the source whence this quartzite was obtained, as slabs from 1 inch to 2 inches thick are found there; but there are many other locations stretching across Southern Illinois to the Mississippi River where they also occur.

It is the large agricultural implements that I refer to as having been made from quartzite slabs, some of which are as much as 16 inches long by 6 inches and 7 inches wide at the spade-blade end. There are many smaller specimens of the same form and character that have been regularly flaked from chert, white waxy quartz, yellow and brown jasper, that do not exceed 6 or 7 inches in length, their working ends highly polished by long use in digging. It is the large hoes and spades flaked from quartzite slabs that to me are evidence of a much higher degree of intelligence and skill than the most highly-finished spear and arrow points evince. Take an edge view of one of these large spades, and observe how accurately straight and free from wind the edge has been carried entirely around the implement, the flattening of one side and rounding the other; then observe that the long flat very slightly depressed flakes have been thrown off at right angles to the edge, even to those curving around its digging or cutting end, which appear to have radiated from a common center. If these flakes have been thrown off by blows so struck and directed as to preserve the cleanly lined edges, as the operator had carried them in his mind, a skill must have been acquired that we cannot approach.

In all the experiments that I have tried with a hammer, whether of stone, steel, soft iron, or copper, they have failed to produce the desired. H. Mis. 15 -56

result; the seat of the flake is more conchoidal, shorter and deeper depressed, whereas the direct percussive pressure throws off the shape of flake that we find has been done in making these spades. If this mode has been resorted to, it necessarily required considerable ingenuity in devices for holding the stone slab firmly, while the pressure was being applied in the right direction. The wooden clamp described by Catlin may have been used. The simplest device that occurs to me that will answer the purpose is a block of wood planted in the ground, with its end grain up, cut on top into steps, as represented in sketch, Fig. 6, the

lower step having grooves parallel with the rise of the upper step; in one of these grooves the edge of the implement is placed, its back resting against the edge of the higher step, as represented by the dotted lines showing the form of a spade. When in this position, presenting the proper angle to the operator, a man holds it firmly while another applies the pressure. A lower step, e, with the back edge of top are hollowed out to receive the work, while its lower end rests in an indentation in the lower step. In this manner a spade can be firmly held while its cutting end is being flaked. I do not present this as a mode that was practiced, but as a device that answers the purpose, and I judge to be within the capacity of the ancient flint-workers, of whom there is nothing left but their chips and finished work.

Let any one experiment with a bone point in chipping flint; he will soon discover the value of a dry bone, a bone free from grease that will hold to its work without slipping, a bone with sufficient hardness to resist abrasion, a bone of strength to bear the pressure, and he will value such a pointed bone, and will understand why, with such a bone, John Smith's ancient arrow-point maker "valued his above price, and would not part with it." I have been informed that the modern Indians free their flaking bones from grease by bury ing them in moistened clay and wood ashes, not unlike the common practice of our housewives to remove grease spots from their kitchen floors.

The hunter or trapper described to me a mode still in practice among the remote Indians of making flakes by lever pressure combined withpercussion, that is more philosophical and a better mechanical arrange

for this purpose; a flattened root makes a firm seat for the stone, a notch cut into the body of a tree the fulcrum for the lever; either a pointed stick is placed on the point of the stone where the flake is to be split from it, its upper end resting against the under side of the lever, or a bone or horn point let into and secured to the lever takes the place of this stick. When the pressure is brought to bear, by the weight of the operation, on the long end of the lever, a second man with a stone, mall, or heavy club strikes a blow on the upper side of the lever, directly over the pointed stick or horn-point, and the flake is thrown off.

Lubbock, in "Prehistoric Times," illustrated the Eskimo scraper as used at the present time in preparing skins. When we consider the close proximity of the flint workshop to the great salt licks on the Saline River, the flowing salt springs, the deeply worn buffalo paths still to be seen after having been subject to the destructive work of cultivation by the plow for more than a generation, where skins by the thousands must have been dressed, it is not surprising that the many chert flakes that have been split off with too great a curvature of their flat side in their length to admit of being chipped into arrow-points should have been utilized for scrapers, many of which are the exact fac simile of what Lubbock has illustrated as the Eskimo and others of the European type, of which he says:

"It is curious, that while these spoon-shaped scrapers are so common in Europe, they are very rare, if indeed they occur at all, in North Am. erica south of the Eskimo region."

I think it most probable from their close resemblance to refuse flakes and chips they were overlooked by early collectors. In the great game districts of the West, both in flint workshops and among the waste of Indian settlements, they are much more abundant than arrow-heads,. or any other implements, with the exception of the small flint knives.