early clearing and cultivation that has been most destructive to the long wall earthworks, and was the place of all others where I expected to find the cup-stones. The single-pit nut-stones and indented hammer-stones were plenty, and also the rude mortars, but the cup. stones were comparatively few.

An aged farmer, whose father with his family emigrated from Virginia into this section when it was Indian territory, and who as a boy worked at the early salt works, tells me that the Indians then here used the single-pit nut-stones, but they did not know anything about the cup-stones. He asked me if I could divine any use for them. On my suggesting grinding he said I was wrong and that he could tell me their use. I will now give his explanation as near as I can in his own language. He said: "If you want to see them in daily use, go to Patagonia, and you can any day see a lot of women squatting around one of these stones spinning yarn and talking scandal. You see, they strip and singe the hair off of a piece of raw hide, lay it on the stone with the flesh side up; they then squeeze it into the cup holes and put something on to hold it while it dries. Then you see every cup makes a step for the foot of a spindle to rest in, and holds just enough grease in it to make the spindle run slick; and, depend on it, that is the way the thread was spun here to weave the cloth that has left its impressions on the pieces of the old clay salt-pans. You know that our Indians did not know anything about them, or of salt either, for that matter; so how could they know what these stones were used for?" I understood him to say that when a boy he learned this from a Pacific whaler, who drifted to the salt works, and who related that on one occasion the vessel he was on laid up for some time in the Straits of Magellan, and that he then saw the Patagonian women using just such stones as steps for their spindles.

If that could have been the use of those that are so abundant here, we should expect to find them where the women dwell rather than at the flint workshops, the same reasoning applying to their use as paint pallets. If used for either of these purposes, why do we find the cup depressions on both sides, and many of the cups of various size, some just started and others worn one into another?

From the fact of the upper stone of the piles as they were left on the flaking ground being covered with such a depth of vegetable mold as not to have been discovered until after cultivation and exposure by the denuding floods, the finding one in the mound with the decayed skeleton of a stone-worker, the one I have before referred to as having been found near the center of a large mound in Kentucky, leaves little room to doubt of their having been, as well as the primeval workshops, coeval with the earth-works and their associated mounds.

There are other evidences of great antiquity in the condition of many of the granite and porphyry implements being honeycombed by the disintegration of their feldspar, leaving the silicious portions rough

and projecting. Celts and fleshers made of the carboniferous limestones have the silex skeletons of their fossils sharp and clearly marked.

From the location at the first ripple of the Sabine as a fishing point, the proximity of the salt-licks for the larger game, no doubt the place was frequented, if not permanently occupied, by the last of the Indians in this section, who have left their stone implements scattered broadcast over the country. They had lost value by the introduction of the nailers iron points, the rifle, knives, and the usual stock of the Indian trader. Had not this paper extended far beyond my original intent, I could give an accumulation of evidence of the rapid decline in the art of flaking stone.

From a mechanical stand-point, it is hard, if not impossible, to reconcile the accepted evolution of works of the stone age from flaked to ground and polished implements. It is true that specimens are found in all stages of progress from rough flake to polished implements in America as well as in Europe. But here in America, where the true flint is absent, a greater range of stone has been resorted to, and what we find flaked and afterwards ground and polished are mostly cutting tools, such as chisels, gouges, &c., of chert, jasper, or fine-grained quartzite that will maintain a keen cutting.edge.

For axes, either plain or grooved, the water-worn pebbles of greenstone, granite, or porphyry have mostly been selected. For fleshers, softer stones are common, such as limestone of various qualities, steatite, occasionally cannel coal, and the harder shales of the coal measures have been used for these wedge-shaped implements. But let the material be what it may, the pecking with a hard stone on a water-worn pebble, often found nearly of the required shape, to modify and bring it to a cuttingedge ready for grinding, by simply rubbing with sand and water on a flat stone, only required labor, patience, and perseverance, but not the knowledge and skill requisite to split off the flakes, nor the judgment, steady hand, and correct eye to shape them into the exquisitely symmetrical forms we find them.

I am not writing on or questioning the evidence of the antiquity of man, but simply on the instruments and tools he would naturally resort to, in his primitive state, to sustain life when depending for food, on the waters for fish, the earth for fruits, seeds, nuts, and roots, and on the chase for animals, not only for food, but, what was most essential for his comfort, skins for clothing, sinews, bone, and horn for innumerable uses. With the aid of a sharpened pebble (stone ax) he could attack a forest tree, and by the aid of fire shape its wood to his uses. Most probably scraping came in advance of cutting, and what could be better adapted for this purpose than the sharp edges of fractured flint pebbles?

With the wooden bow and arrow arose the necessity for an arrowpoint harder than wood. If bone was used, the pebble scraper was essential. The river drift or gravel bars, when subjected to the grinding

and crushing action of drift-logs or rolling bowlders, would furnish many suggestive forms and shapes that a little ingenuity would apply, and out of which would naturally grow the art of flaking.

The streets of Paducah, Ky., are paved with partly rounded, angular, silicious gravel, mostly of jasper. Seeing heaps of this ready for spreading, I was struck by the many forms, mostly highly water polished, that if found on a flaking ground would pass for refuse flakes and rubbish left by the workmen.

On inquiry I was informed that this coarse gravel was from banks on the Tennessee River above the ordinary overflows. I selected many forms that any archæologist would pronounce to be the work of man.

A heavy wagon, loaded with hogsheads of tobacco, drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, passed over the fresh-spread gravel with a sharp, crushing, grinding sound. On examining the wheel tracks I was surprised to find the slight impression the iron tire had made on the surface stones. They had been pressed aside from the wheels, leaving a slight rut, those under the wheels compressed together, but very little broken; not sufficient to account for the sharp, crackling noise made as the wagon-wheels passed over them. On examining the effect from the tread of the wheels to the old road-bed, a depth of about 6 inches, I found most of the larger gravel stones under the top layer split, some into flakes, the fractures in various directions, some crossing others. This spread from the width of the wheel-tires to about three times as wide on the old road-bed. Many of the fresh fractures presented the forms and appearance of genuine cores, and would be mistaken for the work of man. It was a beautiful illustration of the effect of pressure on small points of contact. Our lady friends, often inveterate iced-tea drinkers, when they find a lump of ice too large for their glass, will, with a common toilet-pin between thumb and finger, press its point into the ice, tap its head with the handle of a case-knife, or give it a click with a thimble. The cohesion is destroyed and the ice splits with just such a fracture as is made by impulsive point pressure on the more tenacious and refactory chert.

These Paducah observations led to considerable investigation as to the action of lodged drift-logs on gravel-bars, and finally to an experiment that I should recommend the Smithsonian Institution to try on more extensive scale than I was able to.

I filled a metal cylinder with pebbles of various sizes and shapes, brought a pressure by a screw on them through a plunger; immediately a crepitating sound was heard, which as the pressure increased became sharper and louder, at times almost explosive, as the interstices became filled with broken fragments, producing side pressure and cross fractures. The sound became more confused and died away. On emptying the cylinder, the result was many representations of the rude implements found in the drift.

COPPER IMPLEMENTS FROM BAYFIELD, WISCONSIN.

By Colonel CHARLES WHITTLESEY, of Cleveland, Ohio.

In grading the streets of Bayfield, Wis., about the year 1864, the workmen found a copper implement in the gravel. The accompanying figure, one-half the natural size, will give some idea of the shape and

C

a

a

B

A

character of the specimen (Figure 1). A is an upright outline or elevation, with the concave surface toward the rear. B is a top view or plan of the implement as seen from above, and C a vertical or longitudinal section through the middle. at the dotted line c d. The irregular space e e shows a flaw in the metal.

Several have been found elsewhere in the United States and Canada of about the same outline, but generally the blade or flat part is much larger in proportion to the shank or socket. Where the two parts are equal they are regarded as spades. One described by Mr. Squier in "Ancient Monuments," taken from a sepulchral deposit near Brookville, Canada, is about 10 inches in length. It could be used in digging by inserting a handle several feet in length, with a notch or offset for the foot near the bottom.

FIG. 1.

Those with the short bit may have been spades worn out by use. Their edges are generally sharp, as though they had been used to cut wood or some other hard substance. After they were well worn as spades they could be turned into an adze by inserting a crotch, with the plane of the blade at right angle with the plane of the handle, or into an ax by making the planes coincide.

Found in 1866 on Presque Isl. one of the Apostle
Group Lake Superior on the Surface.

Figure 2 represents a copper knife (half-size) found on Presque Isle, of the Apostle Group of Lake Superior, in 1866. It was lying on

the surface of the ground, and is now in the possession of Mrs. E. M. Haywood, of Bayfield, Wis. The thickness near the ends is shown by the cross-sections at a a and at bb.

Figure 3 represents a copper cutting tool from Knife River, on the northwest shore of Lake Superior, Minnesota. It was found in 1865, and is now in the collection of the Western Reserve and Northern Historical Society of Cleveland, Ohio. It was evidently cold-hammered, and the surface is rough from corrosion.

ANCIENT REMAINS IN OHIO.

By J. P. MACLEAN, of Hamilton, Ohio.

Works near Winchester, Adams County, Ohio.-Winchester Township is located in the extreme northwestern corner of Adams County, Ohio. The terminal moraine of the great ice age enters the township at the northeastern corner, extends diagonally across it, and passes out at the southwestern extremity. The township, for agricultural purposes, is the richest in the county. The soil, for the most part, is poor, known as cold clay, and the surface broken by the tributaries of Brush Creek. North of the village of Winchester, a distance of one-half mile, is a series of circular works, which for fifty or more years have been plowed Near the center of these works is a mound (A) (Plan 1) 8 feet

over.