STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY. 309 



gathered hundreds of our scrapers ; and of one of the smaller ones, 

 smooth upon one side, Mr. Lubbock has written : '' 1 should certainly 

 regard it as a scraper." During the present summer I forwarded speci- 

 mens of the scrapers found about Trenton, IST. J., to my friend, Mr. Wm. 

 A. Baker, of Auburn, K Y., and of one of them he writes: " The small- 

 est (black) one is, in everything except material, an exact duplicate of 

 my Yorkshire scrapers." 



Scrapers vary, in the minerals from which they are made, to the same 

 extent as arrow-points; but the majority of them, unlike arrow points, 

 are of hornstone, chert, jasper, and quartz. Many, however, are of 

 slate and sandstone, and are carefnlly shaped, but have not the same 

 degree of finish as the harder minerals ; but it may be possible that the 

 slate and sandstone specimens were originally finished with the same 

 care, but have been broken in the rough-and-tumble existence to which 

 they have been subjected during the past two centuries. They have all 

 softened upon the surface by the years of weathering, and, if judged b^- 

 the surface only, would be considered much more friable than they 

 really are. If the external coating of rotten stone is scraped off, the 

 body of the specimen is found to be still sufficiently hard to turn the 

 edge of the penknife. 



These remarks upon the surface-decomposition of slate and sandstone 

 relics are, of course, as applicable to arrow-points of these materials as 

 to scrapers. To what extent decomposition is indicative of age cannot 

 well be ascertained; but that the very much worn, deeply rotted, and 

 sometimes scarcely recognizable relics are considerably older than others 

 of identical material, but bard upon the surface, there can be little, if 

 any, doubt. 



Figure 121 represents the largest scraper in our collection and one of 

 the largest that we have seen. It is of slaty rock, and is rudely 

 chipped on both sides, quite hard, and in color very dark. The whole sur- 

 face is much weather-worn, and is of a grayish hue, similar to the yel- 

 low-gray Jersey sand in which it has been lying for so long a time. 

 The specimen measures a fraction over four inches in length and a little 

 more than two and one-half inches in width. The handle is exactly one 

 inch long, and one inch wide at the end, but increases a little in width 

 as it nears the body of the specimen itself. The scraping end is rounded, 

 and equally edged with the sides. There is, in this specimen, no bevel- 

 ing of the li-ont edge, as is the rule with scrapers; but that this is any- 

 thing but a scraper no one will contend. We suppose that the short 

 handle of this specimen was intended to be inserted in a bone handle ol 

 greater width than the body of the implement, since otherwise such 

 a narrow and short projection would only be in the way in using the 

 specimen as an ordinary scraper. 



The other slate scrapers in our collection are all of the true " sheaf-of- 

 wheat" pattern, having the beveled edge at the front, but as a class are 

 thinner than those made from other materials. As slate was certainly 



