330 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



sent a collection of Lacustrien pottery and bronzes, including vases, 

 weights, etc., of clay; bronze bracelets, buttons, pins, rings, instru- 

 ments, ear-rings, collars, fish-hooks, razor, hatchet, lance-head, sickles, 

 knives, and pieces of wire. (Accession 28577.) 



From Halbert East (Jeffersonville, Indiana) was received a large col- 

 lection of stone and bone implements, etc., embracing nuclei, paleo- 

 lithic implements, notched axes, hammers, scrapers, perforators, airow 

 or spear points, polished hatchets, grooved axes, pestles, fragments of 

 pottery, bone implements, fragment of human skull, bones and teeth of 

 animals, jaw-bones of drum fish, awls or needles made of fish-spines, 

 fresh-water shells, and an encrinite bead; 756 specimens. (Accession 

 21498.) 



He states that the largest number and most desirable of the speci- 

 mens were found in a burial place near Clarksville, Indiana, evidently 

 deposited with the bodies of the owners. Some were on the surface 

 and at various depths below it. while others were taken from the graves 

 or gathered on the slope of the shore line after heavy rains or high 

 waters. I have never found a whole vessel of pottery or fragments 

 larger than those sent. Many of the stone implements have been little 

 changed from the stone as it was created, while others have been skill- 

 fully wrought and smoothly finished. Nearly all the pieces of bone 

 have been worked. The shells are part of such as I found quite plenti- 

 fully with the human skeletons. 



Dr. F. A. Steinmeyer (Bonaparte, Van Buren County, Iowa), sent five 

 paleolithic implements, which were found in the vicinity of Bonaparte 

 at a depth ranging from 2 to 5 feet under the soil, which was clay. 

 They were in their original position, and the deposit appeared to be 

 accidental. (Accession 20684). 



Livingston Stone (Baird, California) sent two rude stone axes, which 

 he says were formerly used by the Win-ni-mim Wintum Indians, 

 McCloud River, California. They were — i. e., this kind of ax — in 

 actual use among these Indians during the life-time of the older mem- 

 bers of the tribe, and were the only axes used by them before the ad- 

 vent of the white man 40 or 50 years ago. The larger one was em- 

 ployed to cut down large trees, and the smaller one for brush and 

 small trees. They are simply pieces of stone so cloven as to leave a 

 comparatively sharp edge. (Accession 21035). 



One of the earliest, possibly the very earliest announced principle 

 having a bearing upon the discovery of prehistoric man, was that by 

 the three Scandinavian savants Nilson, Thomsou and Forchammer, in 

 the early part of the nineteenth century, wherein they declared that 

 rude implements belonged to an earlier civilization than those more 

 highly finished. The ruder the implements, the greater their antiquity. 

 It was in the application of this principle by these three wise men that 

 the discovery of prehistoric man was made. I will not deny the cor- 

 rectness of the principle — but it has been misapplied and misconstrued — 



