338 ETHNOLOGY. 



intended to be represented by this carving is the seal, of which, at the 

 present day, a single one will occasionally wander up the Delaware 

 Eiver, one being killed during April of the present year, at Salem, Salem 

 County, Xew Jersey. Formerly the seal was not uncommon in Dela- 

 ware Bay, and, at the time of the settlement of Littleworth, now Trenton, 

 New Jersey, in 1080, they were numerous about the rapids, or so-called 

 Falls, of the Delaware. 



This specimen of stone-carving is by far the finest of the three exam- 

 ples we have been able to secure, and shows in every detail that much 

 care was expended in its production. How a block of stone of its den- 

 sity conld have been cut in the age in question is impossible for us to 

 determine. We have found nothing in the way of weapon-making tools 

 that w-ould answer for such stone-cutting; and it seems incredible that 

 it should have been pecked into shape and the margins and surface 

 afterward polished. A few fresh fractures of small extent show the 

 body of the s.tone to be of a dark lead-blue color, but the surface 

 is a dull brown. Upon one side are four irregularly-shaped patches 

 of small crystals in a matrix of apparently silicate of lime. These 

 have formed upon the specimen after it was lost or thrown aside, 

 and indicate considerable lapse of time since the date of its fashioning 

 by the aboriginal artist. What could have been the object of a carving 

 such as this *? How was it used when finished ? The holes in breast- 

 plates and ear-drops explain their nature and the method of utilizing 

 them, but in the present instance there is nothing by which to suspend 

 the object, nor an indication of any method whereby a handle could 

 have been attached, which latter, however, would scarcely have added 

 to the value of such a specimen. Again, the aborigines were of too 

 migratory a nature for stationary idols or ornaments for the walls of 

 their wigwams. That the three examples figured are the work of the 

 aborigines, and that they are intended to represent animals, cannot be 

 doubted, but as to the meaning of the carvings, and the use to which 

 the specimens were put, we can only conjecture. 



Figure 177, 117a is a small, oddly-shaped pebble of a reddish-brown 

 color, which, while it originally bore some resemblance to the head of a 

 bird, has had that resemblance increased by the rubbing away of certain 

 points about the margin, and the grinding of the convex surface on one 

 side uutil it was flat, leaving in the center of the worn surfaces a circular 

 I)rojection, which correctly represents, in size and position, an eye of a 

 bird. The under surface is irregularly concave, and has no such eye- 

 trace or other markings upon it.* 



Figure 178 represents the head and neck of a bird-like animal, rather 

 than of a bird or mammal exclusively. Were it the only specimen of 

 this kind we had seen, wo should doubt the propriety of considering it 

 an indication of stone-age art, although it has marks of human work- 

 manship in the polished margins at the slope of the back of the head and 



* Figure 177 does uot correctly represent the specimen, the artist having omitted the 

 " eye." 



