266 ETHNOLOGY. 



used in cutting, or a single-edged one, if a bone handle was ever 

 attached to the lower, straighter margin. With a handle so attached, 

 it certainly could then be used advantageously as a hatchet or chopping- 

 knife, and, when sharper, as an instrument for detaching the tough hide 

 of the bison or deer, both of which, from the crumbling bones that we 

 have occasionally exhumed, we note know were formerly found in New 

 Jersey. Again, such a hatchet would be useful in breaking apart the 

 tough vertebrae of the sturgeon, once so numerous in the Delaware 

 Eiver. These immense fish frequent the shallow portions of the stream 

 during the summer, and are, even now, captured by the spear when 

 found in such localities. If the stone-age people valued the sturgeon as 

 an article of food, which is probable, they would require the very largest 

 and sharpest of their stone weapons to capture it and to divide the 

 carcass. An occasional glance at the fauna of the locality from which 

 we gather "relics" will give us many valuable hints as to the probable 

 use of the various implements. Again, may not such a chipped flint as 

 figure 28 have been a sort of "handy comeby," and not specially set 

 apart for any particular use or uses ? Some such shaped flint, bone- 

 handled, as we have described, would be admirable for splitting marrow- 

 bones, crushing large mussels, girdling trees, or cutting saplings for 

 lance-handles ; and, if put to any or all these uses, must we not call it a 

 hatchet "I 



Figure 29 represents a form of flint hatchet that approaches the 

 "lance-head" in shape, but is, of course, too short and broad to be used 

 for such purpose. Having a well-defined edge upon each side, as well 

 as in front, where it becomes obtusely-pointed, it appears evident that 

 it was used to split rather than to pierce. If a handle was attached, we 

 suppose it to have been placed at the flattened or straight base, and to 

 have been of bone, as in figure 214 of Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, 

 second edition, although this illustration referred to is that of a knife, 

 and not a hatchet. We think it not improbable that just such "flints" 

 as these were inserted in long wooden clubs as " teeth," and that clubs 

 thus formed were used in war. The war-club was, and is, a favorite 

 weapon, and the vast majority of such specimens as figure 29 were very 

 possibly used in this manner. 



Figure 29 bears much resemblance, except in being more pointed at 

 one end, to modern Esquimaux scrapers, as figured by Sir John Lubbock,* 

 but is just double the size. There is this diflerence, however, between 

 either the modern or the prehistoric scrapers and such an implement as 

 we here designate a hatchet, viz, that the former have one flat, smooth 

 surface, the plane of a single cleavage, while the hatchets have an edge, 

 beveled from each side, which are both equally well chipped. These 

 more elaborate "hatchets" may have been used as "scrapers." 



We would also call attention to the similarity of our specimens, as 

 represented by figure 29, to a flint implement from Le Moustier, also 



" Prehistoric Times, 2d ed., p. 93, figs. 105-107. 



