478 



NATURE 



{Sept. 30, 1875 



The results obtained by the two learned associates 

 were so rapid and so unquestionable, that in 1872 their 

 laboratory at the Hotel-Dieu was declared to be anjesta- 

 blishment of public utility. 



A few weeks afterwards the Commissioner of the Budget 

 of the National Assembly having paid a visit to the 

 Hotel-Dieu, inserted in his report a clause asking support 

 for the then existing establishment, at the expense of 

 the Government, and the extension of the system to 

 other Paris hospitals. A sum of 32,000 francs was voted 

 without opposition, and three laboratories were opened, 

 one at La Pitid, the second at the Charitd, and the third 

 at the Clinical Hospital. The reports of the Com- 

 mission de Budget were succesively presented by M. Beuld, 

 the ex-Minister of the Interior, and, after he had met his 

 untimely death, by the present sub-Minister of Justice, 

 M. Bardoux, who both of them asked for frais de premier 

 etablisscinent. A sum of 90,000 francs was voted, partly 

 by the Versailles National Assembly and partly by the 

 Municipal Council of Paris. 



Dr. Liouville was appointed the chief of the Hotel-Dieu 

 Laboratory ; Dr. Carnhill, an anatomist universally known 

 by his researches on the diseases of the liver, was ap- 

 pointed the chief of the La Charite Laboratory. 



In one of the first sittings of the last session the 

 Municipal Council decided that a large pavilion on the 

 northern part of the New Hotel-Dieu, now building, 

 should be reserved for the clinical laboratory. No money 

 is to be spared in order to procure the most important 

 instruments which can be designed for chemical or 

 medico-physical observations, either in the way of gal- 

 vanic batteries, microscopes, sjjectroscopes, &c. A clinical 

 laboratory will also be established in the new hospital 

 to be inaugurated at the end of next November, which 

 will be one of the most extensive in Paris. 



NOTE ON HAEMATITE INDIAN AXES 

 FROM WEST VIRGINIA, U.S.A. 



THROUGH the kindness of Horace Fisk, of Trenton, 

 and Major Jed. Hotchkiss, of Staunton, Va., I have 

 been able to procure two specimens of hjaematite iron ore 

 hatchets, of aboriginal manufacture. They possess great 

 interest from the fact of being very similar to native 

 copper axes, characteristic of the "finds" of relics of 

 " mound builders." The specimens, one of which is here 

 figured, have unquestionably been hammered out cold, 

 and shaped from a fragment of the ore, without the aid 

 of fire in previously refining the mass. The specimen 

 figured measures five inches and a quarter in length, by 

 three inches in breadth at the cutting end. The opposite 

 end is square, nearly two inches in width, and somewhat 

 thinner than the broader portion of the implement, which 

 is nowhere of greater thickness than one-fourth of an 

 inch. 



The entire surface still shows the hammer marks made 

 in shaping the hatchet, even to the edge, which now 

 shows no trace of grinding or polish ; but this may have 

 been obliterated by the rust ; but I am inclined to believe 

 from close inspection of both specimens, that the edge 

 originally was a hammered one, and not a ground one ; 

 making the specimen more nearly allied to the " clipped " 

 jasper hatchets than polished (ground) porphyry axes. 



The accompanying specimen is four-and-a-half inches in 

 length, by two in breadth, is nearly uniform in thickness 

 about three-sixteenths of an inch, and has a well-defined 

 edge, which from its slightly wavy outline, and slight 

 variation in width, I believe to be a hammered, and not 

 a grounj or polished edge. 



Two other specimens, similar to these, were found with 

 them, and are now in the calimat of Major Hotchkiss, who 

 informs me that the series of four were found under an 

 uprooted tree, on an Indian trail, at the Forks of Kelley's 

 and Rich Creek, Gauley Mt., Tayette Co., West Va. 



It has been suggested that the use of hcematite for paint 

 among our Indians may have led to its employment for 

 other purposes (" Flint Chips," by E. T. Stevens, p. 553), 

 and this is no doubt true, inasmuch as small irregular 

 fragments of this mineral were often utilised, if the shape 

 would at all permit, as arrow heads. Among the thou- 

 sands of arrow-heads gathered in New Jersey, I have not 

 met with one of iron* ore that has been worked into any 

 of the various patterns of flint points ; but from graves, 

 associated with others, I have found fragments of the ore, 

 and once, of native copper, of such shape and size, and so 

 placed, that they were evidently arrow-heads. 



A curious form of " relic," known here as a " plummet," 

 occasionally occurs, made of iron-ore. One such is 

 figured in the "American Naturalist," vol. vi., p. 643, 

 Fig. 132. This specimen " is made of iron ore, ground 

 down and polished until it is almost as smooth as glass." 

 As such plummets are found in the western mounds, as 

 well as on the surface of the ground throughout the 

 Atlantic coast States, and are always polished, it seems 

 fair to presume that a cutting instrument of such hard 

 material would undoubtedly be polished and ground, if, 

 at the time of its manufacture, grinding was known or 

 practised among the aborigines in fashioning their various 

 weapons and instruments. 



When we consider that these iron hatchets were found 

 in a locality once thickly populated by Indians, and 

 probably frequently visited, if not occupied, by the mound- 

 builders, and now yield, on search, an abundance of ordi- 

 nary stone implements of every grade of workmanship 

 and variety of pattern, it seems at least probable that the 

 specimens in question were not fashioned at a time when 

 the polishing and grinding of weapons was customary, 

 but earlier, as the labour of beating so hard a material 

 into its present shape would doubtless be supplemented 

 by polishing, if the additional value given to an implement 

 by the operation had been recognised. 



As the writer has already endeavoured to show, through 

 an extensive series of New Jersey specimens (Nature, 

 vol. xi., p. 215), that the ruder chipped implements of 

 "our native rocks" are older than the more elaborate 

 jasper and porphyry specimens, so I consider these 

 hammered iron hatchets to be of an earlier age than 

 either the polished iron plummets of the mound-builders, 

 or ground axes of the Indians. 



Charles C. Abbott 



Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. 



