STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY. 365 



may have been used as such, the incisions in the skin being previously 

 made with a flint knife. 



Since the publication of Mr. Evans's volume, to which we have referred 

 so frequently, it seems more probable that it was used in rubbing down 

 skins in the process of their i^reparation for clothing. The shape and 

 size of the stone, its high polish, and prevalence among the relics that 

 characterize the sites of villages, seem certainly to indicate that it was 

 a domestic implement. 



Figure 207 represents another example of polished pebble, that has 

 been altered little, if any, in shape. A noticeable feature is in its being 

 perforated by five small holes, which are natural, however, being thread- 

 like veins of softer mineral which have been drilled out. One of these 

 perforations occurring near the margin of the stone, the stone itself has 

 been worn off at that point until much thinner than elsewhere, and the 

 hole then enlarged by a very slender stone-drill. A cord was passed 

 through this hole to suspend the imi)lement or ornament. 



If an implement, this specimen was used in the same manner as the 

 preceding one. The curved outline is of about the same thickness as 

 figure 200, and appears, like that, to be more highly i^olished than the 

 other portions of the stone. Either as a "skinning-knife" or a skin- 

 dresser, it is as available as the preceding example. 



Professor Nilsson* has figured and described what he terms a " stretch- 

 ing implement," to which class of stone implements both figures 20G and 

 207 may belong. He says of the illustration which he gives, "The widened 

 part, representing the edge, has been rounded ofl' by constant icear, prob- 

 ably from being rubbed against leather or something of that kind. A 

 person who has lived many years as a mechanic in Greenland, thinks he 

 has discovered a great resemblance between this stone implement and the 

 bone implement, provided with a handle, which is there used for stretch- 

 ing skins in order to give them the requisite softness. A somewhat 

 similar stretching implement of iron is still used in those parts of Scania 

 where the winter dress of the peasantry consists of sheep-skin coats.'' 

 ^Ve can readily see that the specimens we have figured, although much 

 smaller, could be used in just such manner as Professor Nilsson describes ; 

 and as the deer-skin was the principal material for clothing, these stones 

 may have been used by laborious rubbing with the rounded edge to 

 render the hide flexible ; the edge appearing the same in both Professor 

 Xilsson's and our specimens. 



In a previous publication f we have described a New Jersey " stretch- 

 ing implement," which is now believed to have been a true " scraper," 

 and is so classed in chapter XII of this paper. "With such scrapers as we 

 find, wherewith to clean the skins, and with these polished porphyry 

 pebbles to stretch and soften them, after their dressing of " brains,"! the 

 aborigines could make most comfortable clothing of the hides of our 



* Stone Age, p. 77, and pi. ix, fig. 185. t Amer. Nat., vol. vi, p. 222. 



} See Catlin'a N. A. Indians, vol. i, p. -l"). 



