PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



297 



is now ill my own possession is a broken knife or Luice-liead, measuring in its 

 present imperfect condition only 2 J inches. I was placed in communication with 

 the discoverer by Mr. Hay, in whose employment he had formerly been ; and 

 on my applying to him for information as to the precise circumstances under 

 which the flint implement had been discovered, he presented it to me, along with 

 the desired statement. Mr. P. A. Scott is an intelligent Canadian, formerly in 

 business as a carpenter at Cobourg, Upper Canada, who, in 1850, joined a party 

 about to start on an expedition to the gold diggings ; and while engaged in the 

 search for gold at the Grinnell Leads, in Kans# Territory, he found the imperfect 



flint implement, figured here, the size 

 of the original, at a depth of upward 

 of fourteen feet from the surface. 

 The spot where this discovery was 

 made is in the Blue Range of the 

 liocky mountains, in an alluvial bot- 

 tom, and distant several hundred feet 

 from a small stream called Clear creek. 

 A shaft was sunk, passing through 

 four feet of rich, black soil, and, below 

 this, through upward of ten feet of 

 gravel, reddish clay, and rounded 

 quartz. Here the flint implement was found, and its unmistakable artificial 

 form so impressed the finder that he secured it, and carefully noted the depth 

 and the character of the strata under which it lay. Though the actual object 

 corresponds more to the small and slighter productions of the modern Indian 

 tool-maker than to the rude and massive drift implement which I had conjured 

 up in fancy, it has no claims to more artistic skill. Under any circumstances it 

 would be rash to build up comprehensive theories on a solitary case like this ; 

 but, though small, and otherwise dissimilar to the drift implements of France 

 and England, there is nothing in the workmanship of the Grinnell Leads flint to 

 suggest its origin at a later period ; for it is only chipped into form with such rudo 

 skill as is fully equalled by that displayed in the former ; and may, therefore, 

 very well accord with the idea of the most rudimentary traces of art being alone 

 discoverable in the manufactures of the Drift Period. 



The growing favor with which this opinion is entertained is illustrated by 

 the attempts made by Mr. Worsaa? and other Danish antiquaries to separate 

 that Stone Period of prehistoric times, which they have hitherto considered in 

 connexion with the cromlechs, banta-steins, and other primitive monuments of 

 Sweden and Denmark, from another and greatly more remote era, or Flint 

 Period, to which the recently explored hjockkenmoaddingcr , or shell mounds and 

 coast refuse-heaps, are assigned. In these, numerous flint wedged and other 

 implements of the rudest workmanship have been found ; bvit, along with them, 

 some rare specimens of well wrought and highly finished flint tools or weapons 

 have occurred. These, indeed, some would still regard as stray relics of a later 

 date, like the Indian weapons and sepulchral remains superficially deposited in 

 file ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley. But Professor Steenstrup, who 

 has been associated with Professors Forchhammer and VVorsaai since 1847, in 

 the exploration of the hjockkenmcaddingcr, peat bogs, and other formations 

 whick enclose the ancient traces of man, entirely rejects the idea of any interval 

 of separation between the Kjockkenmoedding Period, and the earliest and rudest 

 stage of the Danish Stone Age. If, therefore, the two constitute one era, the 

 purely exceptional character of all but the coarsely-shaped flint implements in 

 the kjockkenmoedding tends to suggest the probability of further research lead- 

 ing to the discovery in the drift also of some of the more delicate and carefully 

 finished flint tools. 



In reality, however, the difference is more one of material than Avorkmanship. 



