COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 383 



(a) That sometimes ledges (of novaculite) showing evidence of the 

 use of fire in splitting the rock were worked to the depth of 25 feet. 



(b) That the fragments so excavated were chipped in many cases into 

 rude leaf shaped blades or blanks. 



(c) That a small minority of these, nearly always broken, showed a 

 thickness and specialization equal to the cache forms (fig. 10), while 

 the greater majority strewn about with hammer stones and chips 

 seemed to have been cast aside as failures in the attempt to specialize 

 them to the thinness and edge of the broken specimens found with 

 them. (See Plate III.) 1 



(d) That these failures or blocked-out forms often resembled in size 

 and shape the forms of argillite from the Trenton Gravels (see figs. 14 

 and 15), and in many cases, I may add, the specimens (see fig. 17 A) 

 found in the Quaternary Gravels of the Somme Marne Valleys. 2 



At these quarries the form c (PI. Ill), the end and aim of the quarry 

 chipper s effort, valuable as it was to him, and never left behind with 

 the refuse unless lost, is exceedingly rare, and has never, I believe, 

 been found save in fragments. Forms a and b, however, are not uncom 

 mon, and in one refuse pile examined by me averaged about one to a 

 bushel of chips. 



From discoveries made at Weiders Creek, Lehigh County, and at upper 

 Blacks Eddy in Bucks County, Pa., I have reason to think it probable 

 that blocks of jasper weighing 10 to 15 pounds were carried to a dis 

 tance of several miles from the quarry and sometimes buried in the 

 mud of swamps as if to keep them wet for flaking, for in one instance of 

 this character blocks had been placed under a heap of earth close to 

 an arrowhead workshop. On the other hand, the Brandon (England) 

 flint knappers, working altogether by percussion, dry the nodules in 

 the air or by a stove before chipping it saying that otherwise the iron 

 hammer does not u take hold.&quot; 



An excavation made in an ancient pit at Macungie, Lehigh County, \ 

 Pennsylvania, showed that fires were built there to shiver large blocks 

 of jasper built over the flames in the shape of ovens, and there, at the 1 

 bottom of a mass of disturbed earth 18 J feet thick, we found two sharp 

 ened billets of wood and a large chipped disk of blue limestone. 



But there is yet much to learn as to the details of the stone-chipping 

 process, as to the size and manner of working the pits, possible tunnels, 

 the reducing and transporting of blocks, the use of the hammer stone 

 Upon variable materials, the bone punches, and the application of pres 

 sure, direct and indirect, much that Indians now living certainly many 

 of those in Alaska and Brazil could definitely tell us. 



1 Points a, I, and c had been established by Mr. Gerard Fowke in 1884 in his 

 investigation of the ancient pits and quarry refuse at Flint Ridge, Ohio. (A 

 sketch of Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio, by Charles M. Smith (Gerard Fowke), 

 of New Madison, Ohio, Smithsonian Report, 1884, p. 13.) 



2 A work in which I have had the pleasure of following Mr. Holmes and confirm 

 ing the above conclusions in several newly discovered quarries in eastern Penn 

 sylvania. 



