90 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Mr. James Vroom of St. Stephen, Charlotte County's foremost 

 scientific and historical scholar, always interested in such matters 

 and a resident of St. George in 1869-72, has told me that he under- 

 stood Laney to be a poor and shiftless farmer who lived near the 

 Canal (outlet of Lake Utopia) and occasionally worked as a stone 

 mason, that is, a builder of rough stone walls, and that he brought the 

 stone home for use as a hearth stone. Mr. Vroom adds (in a letter of 

 October 30, 1914: 



Some of my friends in St. George at the time thought that Mr. Laney himsel^ 

 had fashioned the stone; but the weathered condition of the surface was a convinc- 

 ing argument against that theory. Others thought it might have been made by 



early French residents; but the design does not favour that assumption 



The possibility of the carving being of Scandinavian origin occurred to me; but I 

 dismissed it for the very good reason that any Norse stone I had ever heard of bore 

 a runic inscription. It would not be impossible for a Norse visitor to carve a head, 

 but it would have been next thing to impossible for him to have left out the letters 

 that would tell his story to those who came after. I do not believe it is of Indian 

 origin, for an Indian with the top of his head shaved and with long hair at the back 

 cut off so squarely is quite out of the range of my imagination. The Egyption 

 look of the eye and ear, caused by want of perspective, is not of much significance. 

 It merely shows lack of skill in drawing, not convention, in my opinion. 



Mr. Thomas A. Sullivan, long resident at Bonney River, near 

 St. George, an observant lumberman and sporting man, has told me 

 that he saw the stone in a boat at St. George when it was first brought 

 there from Utopia by Colonel Wetmore, Mr. Ward, and Sebattis an 

 Indian on their return from a sporting expedition; that it had been 

 found by them at the Lake; and that it had moss upon it, and there 

 was no question raised as to its genuineness. Curiously enough, the 

 same account of the discovery by Colonel Wetmore, Mr. Ward, and 

 the Indian when on a hunting expedition, was given me independently 

 by Mr. Ward's brother, the late Clarence Ward. A memory state- 

 ment of this kind can have no validity in comparison with the con- 

 temporary records which make Laney the finder, but like all tradi- 

 tions it probably has a basis, which I take to be presumably this, that 

 Colonel Wermore's party, when returning from a hunting trip to the 

 Lake, stopped at Laney 's house near the Canal, obtained the stone 

 from him, and brought it with them to St. George. 



The best traditional information was given me by Mr. Martin 

 McGowan, Police Magistrate of St. George. He told me that he 

 was once a neighbour of Laney, who lived on the. north side of the 

 Canal; that Laney found the stone at Lake Utopia; that he had it 

 for some time around the house before he discovered the head upon 

 it; that he told Colonel Wetmore about it and was asked to bring it 

 in, and Colonel Wetmore gave him $5.00 for it; that when Colonel 



