456 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



11 to 14 per cent; oxide of iron, 5 to 8 per cent, and aluminum, 1 to 3 

 per cent; with specific gravity 2.9 to 3. 



A profusion of prehistoric implements, principally axes or adzes made 

 of nei^lirite, have been found from the Straits of Fuca northward along 

 the entire coast of British Columbia and the northern end of Alaska. 

 (Plate 37.) 



Pectolite is comjoosed of: Silica, 51; lime, 33; soda, 9 per cent; with 

 a specific iiravity of 2.7 to 2.9. It is found among the Eskimos and 

 the Indians on the northwest coast of jSTorth America. Its principal 

 service is as a hammer, for wliicli use it is pici)ared with a withe 

 and lashed to a wooden handle (Plate 37), and as an evidence of the 

 almost universal art instinct of prehistoric man, this hammer, which 

 might have been only a rough stone in every part except its face, has, 

 despite its hardness and the difficulty and tediousness of the work, 

 been pecked or hammered into a symmetrical form and then ground or 

 polished to a smooth and regular surface, as though this were required 

 for utility. 



The finding of two partly worked bowlders of nephrite on the lower 

 part of the Fraser Iliver, at Lytton and Yale, British Columbia, resi)ec- 

 tively, and the discovery of unfinished objects in old Indian graves 

 near Lytton, make it certain that the manufacture of adzes had been 

 carried on there. 



A series of specimens, numbering sixty-one in all, have been deposited 

 in the Museum of the Geological Survey, at Ottawa, and in the Kedpath 

 Museum, McGill College, Montreal. These consist of both nephrite 

 and pectolite imi)lements, as adzes, drills, axes, etc. Of the sixty one 

 objects found, seventeen show that tb^y have been sawed from other 

 pieces. A prolific source of supply of this mineral in primitive times, 

 now known as Jade Mountain, is situated about 150 miles above the 

 mouth of the Kowak River, in Alaska. The world is indebted for 

 the discovery of this mountain to Lieut. G. M. Stoney, United States 

 Navy, who has brought down, and presented to the United States 

 National Museum, quite a number of specimens. Plate 38 represents 

 sundry of the pieces, some water- worn bowlders and fractured frag- 

 ments of the material, accompanied by two or three manufactured 

 specimens. This is the only known source of supply of this mineral 

 in America. 



Mif/ration. — When implements are found which, upon analysis, con- 

 tain the foregoing component parts and are determined to be of this 

 mineral, it raises a fair presumption that they came from this source of 

 supply, and is presumptive evidence of prehistoric communication, if 

 not migration, between the peoples. This is true only to a certain point, 

 and is not susceptible of universal application. It does not follow that 

 all nephrite objects came from Jade Mountain. 



Jadeite is an entirely different mineral from nephrite or any of the 

 varieties of jade, and must, or at least may, have had a different place 

 of origin and come from a different direction. 



