256 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



his implements wherever the material was most convenient and abundant. 

 None of the larger implements, such as axes, hammers, pestles, or mortars have 

 been found, excei^ting one, a weather-worn axe of soft stone. The latter was 

 found near the mouth of the creek." 



The collection of stone objects sent to the National Museum by Mr. McLean 

 comprises chijjs, flakes, rude implements, broken leaf-shaped implements, 

 scrapers, and arrow-heads, of green, brown and yellowish jasper, and other sil- 

 icious material. The shells taken from these heaps Avere identified by Mr. Dall 

 as those of Mytilus californianus^ Purpura crispata, Purpura saxicola, Acmcaa 

 l^elta, Acmcea spectrum, Acmwa mitra, Tapes staminea, Pholas californica, Fissu- 

 rella aspera, Chrysodomus dirus, HalioHs rttfescens^ Chlorostoma funehrale, Chloros- 

 toma brunneum, and Helix Townsendiana. There were further found plates of 

 CryptocMion Stelleri and of an undetermined species of Chiton, a fragment of an 

 Echinus-^\\e\\, and some teeth of canine animals. 



Alaska. — In describing a number of bone dart-heads, obtained by Mr. W. 

 H. Dall from shell-heaps on the Aleutian Islands, I briefly indicated, in accord- 

 ance with his statements, the general character of those deposits, and presented 

 also some of the conclusions therefrom derived by him.* 



It will be remembered that he found the shell-heaps on the islands to consist 

 of three successive deposits, which, he thinks, mark diff'erent stages in the devel- 

 opment of the population that had formed them. The earliest or littoral period 

 is characterized by the echinus-layer, which, resting on the natural soil, consists 

 almost exclusively of the broken, or rather pulverized, tests and spines of 

 Echinus Drobachiensis, Agass., the only species of its kind found in that region, 

 and eaten raw by the present Aleuts. This layer is sparingly intermixed with 

 shells of still living mollusks, among which those of Modiola vulgaris, Fleming, 

 Mytilus edulis, Lin., Purpura lima, Martyn, and Purpura dccemcostata, Midd., 

 may be mentioned as being most frequent. This bed, varying from two to three 

 feet in thickness, contained no other bones of A^ertebrates, but some fish-bones, 

 and these in very rare instances. There were no traces of the use of fire observ- 

 able, and no implements or weapons of bone or stone occurred, excepting rude 

 hammer-stones with indentations on the broad sides. These stones served for 

 cracking the echini and shells. No remains bearing on navigation -occurred, 

 though Mr. Dall thinks that rafts or rude canoes of some kind must have been 

 in use. The people who left this layer, the explorer conjectures, lived in an 

 extremely low stage of human development, and he thinks they were addicted to 

 cannibalism, though he has found no confirmatory evidence of this practice in 

 the deposit. He is inclined to assign no less than a thousand years to the 

 accumulation of the stratum. 



* Sen p. 144 of this worl;. 



