568 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



across the widest part. Six of them are made of mottled red and brown 

 flossy jtisper, and the remaining twenty-six of ordinary white flint, 

 shading in texture from the compact translucent glassy, to the opaque 

 milk-white varieties. In one of the neatest and most perfectly proi^or- 

 tioned specimens the natural conchoidal fracture of the stone from which 

 it was struck gives one side its exact contour without aid of any chip- 

 ping. In several are embedded fragments of fossil crinoidal stems around 

 which the siliceous atoms in solution or suspension first collected and 

 solidified to form the rock; and in six there remain near the edges 

 small patches of the buff, rind-like calcareo-siliceous outer coating of 

 the flint-nodules from which they were split, not entirely removed by 

 the process of manufacturing. The rounded edge of each is smooth and 

 worn, and the sides of some are gapped, testifying to long and hard 

 usage before their interment, and indicating conclusively that the broad 

 circular edge of the tool was the one chiefly used. There is no reason 

 to believe that these beautiful objects were used as weapons in any 

 manner. Their pointed ends may have been inserted in handles of some 

 description for convenience of manipulating them ; but their crescent 

 edges, so similar to the half-moon knives of modern curriers and other 

 leather workers, forcibly suggest their use as skin-dressers. They are 

 too fragile to have been serviceable in the scraping work of canoe-mak- 

 ing, or in shaping any hard- wood or bone instruments; and could not 

 have so well preserved their fine edges as hand-used agricultural im- 

 plements, or clay-diggers for pottery making. Hence, I conclude that 

 they were the vade mecum of the squaws, and their chief reliance in all 

 their work requiring the aid of mechanical appliances. 



i:j^dian remains in^ cass county, Illinois. 



By J. F. Snyder, M. D., of Virginia, III. 



Cass County fits into the angle formed by the confluence of the San- 

 giimon, flowing from the east, with the Illinois River in its course to 

 tlie Mississipjii, a little west of the center of the State. It is not in 

 tae "forks" of the two rivers, but the one sweeps its entire northern 

 border while the other bounds its lim its on the west. Its topography 

 is identical in main features with the most part of the great undulating 

 prairie system of the State ; and may be briefly described as a scope 

 of open rolling land, studded with groves and furrowed with creeks 

 and rivulets, and fringed all along its northern and western jwrtions 

 with ranges of bluffs which form the boundaries of the river valleys. 

 Extending from the foot of these ranges of bluffs to the rivers lie the 

 rich alluvial " bottoms" varying in width from 2 to 7 miles. Viewed 

 from below the bluffs rise to the height of 150 feet in picturesque 

 grass-covered peaks and ridges separated from each other by deep 



