148 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



these rude spear-points are found, as a rule, are very significant. 

 In certain upland fields, never far from water-courses, and which 

 were the high, dry, habitable localities when the later gravel areas 

 were yet comparatively low and swampy, these objects are found 

 in great abundance, and very often not associated with the famil- 

 iar forms of Indian implements. Again, they also occur in the 

 alluvial mud which has been for centuries, and is still, accumulat- 

 ing over the tide-water meadows that skirt the banks of the Dela- 

 ware River from Trenton to the sea. Now, it may be maintained 

 that we are without warrant in assuming that the age or object of 

 any given form of stone implement can be determined by the 

 character of the locality where it happens usually to be found 

 exception, of course, being made to the palaeolithic implements of 

 an earlier geological period. To a certain extent this is true. A 

 bead is none the less an ornament, whether dredged from the river- 

 bottom or found in an upland field ; and yet how very seldom does 

 any implement or other relic of the Indians occur, except where 

 we should expect to find them ! In basing any conclusions upon 

 the characteristic features of a locality where implements are 

 found, it is necessary to determine if there has been any recent 

 general disturbance of the spot. This is readily done usually, and 

 the principal barrier to a logical conclusion is removed. Long ex- 

 perience in archaeological field-work has fully convinced me that, 

 in the vast majority of instances, stone implements are practically 

 in the same position that they were when buried, lost, or discarded. 

 A single specimen or even a hundred might mislead ; but it be- 

 comes safe to base a conclusion upon the locality, when we have 

 the material in such abundance as in this instance of these rude 

 spear-points, and find that fully eighty per cent are from the allu- 

 vial mud of the river meadows, or such isolated upland areas as 

 have been described. But more significant than all else is the fact 

 that these simply designed spear-points are all of argillite, the 

 same material of which are made the rude implements found in 

 the gravel. There is, therefore, no break, as it were, in the se- 

 quence of events in the occupation of the region by man no 

 change of race, no evidence of an abrupt transition from one 

 method of tool -making to that of another, but merely an improve- 

 ment that was doubtless as gradual as the change from the epoch 

 of glacial cold to that of our moderate climate of to-day. What at 

 first sight appears fatal to the views here expressed is that a peo- 

 ple so far advanced as to make these spear-points should have 

 made many other forms of stone implements ; but only the former 

 are found deeply buried in the mud of the river. If, as is believed, 

 the spears were used in fishing more than for any other purpose, 

 they alone would be likely to be lost. Other objects in use upon 

 their village sites would seldom, if ever, be taken to the fishing- 



