298 PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



A certain class of flint axes arc found, especially in Denmark, not onlj g:ound 

 to an edge, but with the Avhole surface polished ; but these are comparatively 

 uncommon on the continent, and are only rarely found in Biitaiu. The 

 natunil fracture of flint brings it nearly to the required shape for knives, arrow 

 and lance heads, and axe-blades, without grinding. But it is otherwise with the 

 amorphous trap, gi-anite, and other hard rocks wrought into stone axes, &c. 

 These had to be rubbed and ground into shape, and some of them are found 

 polished with elaborate symmetry and finish. If stone implements should 

 hereafter be recovered under ciipumstances indicative of a corresponding an- 

 tiquity with the flint manufactures of the drift, the more intractable material 

 will be found to have compelled the primitive Avorkman to employ some amount 

 of grinding and polishing on his rudest weapons. 



The varied ethnological collections of the Smithsonian Institution, when com- 

 pletely arranged, will be found to illustrate many interesting points of compara- 

 tive ethnic art. The examination of the Indian implements already displayed 

 in its cabinets has now sufficed to recall to mind a flint implement in my own 

 collection, the significance of which, as a possible relic of older races than the 

 Red Indians of this continent, was overlooked by me at the time I acquired it. 

 When passing, some years since, through the village of Lewiston, in the State 

 of New York, I purchased from an itinerant vender of Indian bead-work some 

 flint implements, chiefly arrow-heads, such as are constantly jiloughed up on 

 the sites of Indian settlements ; but along with those was a large disc, or 

 spear-head, of dark flint, 4'| inches long by 3.J broad, which I was informed had 

 been procured in the neighborhood in the process of sinking a well. Regarding 

 it merely as an unusually large specimen of an Indian flint spear-head, I de- 

 posited it among other relics of the same class without further inquiry. But 

 my visit to Washington has afforded me an opportunity of examining some 

 similar discs of flint or hornstone, found under circumstances which give a new 

 interest to the Lewiston implement. In one of the cabinets of the Smithsonian 

 collection two large flint implements are deposited, which attracted my eye from 

 their apparent correspondence to the oval or almond-shaped implements of the 

 drift, made with a fractured cutting edge all around. A label attached to one 

 of them is as follows : " Thirty of these found, at the depth of eight feet, under a 

 peaty formatiori, near Racine, Wisconsin ; deposited by P. R. Hoy." Dr. 

 Hoy is a contributor to various departments of the Smithsonian collections ; 

 and his name also repeatedly occurs in Lapham's " Antiquities of Wiscon- 

 sm, Surveyed and Described." At page eight of that work the following state- 

 ment is made on his authority : "Some workmen, in digging a ditch through 

 a peat swamp, near Racine, found a deposit of discs of hornstone, about 

 thirty in number. They were immediately on the clay at the bottom of 

 the peat, about two feet and a half below the surface. Some of the 

 discs were quite regular. They vary from half a pound to a pound in 

 weight." Notwithstanding the discrepancy between the two accounts of the 

 depth at which the implements were tbuud, both statements probably refer to 

 the same discovery.* The larger of the two specimens measures 5^ inches 



* In answer to a letter addressed to Dr. Hoy, on this subject, Mr. Albert H. Hoy writes, 

 January 25, 1803 : "Dr. Hoy desires me to state that the fiiat discs were found in dig- 

 ging a ditch through the bottom of a ravine near this city, (Racine. Wisconsin,) formerly 

 the bed of Root river, which enters the lake at this point. The doctor thinks tliesa liints 

 had been transported from some point and buried here by the Indians, as a sort of cache, 

 in order that they might readily find them when they wished to construct arrow-heads, 

 spear-points, and the h'ke. From the nature of the peaty formation, the doctor thinks 

 that the flints were deposited after the formation of the surrounding soil. It may be that 

 the Indians purposely buried the flints in this moist situation that they might remain 

 damp, as it is known tha,t in this state flint is the easier worked or chipped, Some thirty 

 more were found at one point, and had the appearanca of being deposited in a pile." As 

 no correction is made of the later depth assigned to their discovery, I presume it to be 

 correct. 



