ftELIQUI^E AQTJITANIC2E. 



^rinding of small parcels of grain or other food, or for rubbing the materials of 

 paint, poison, &c. ; but some of these stones seem too small even for such a 

 purpose ; and, if these rough-grained bowls had been used in the preparation of 

 a paint of red ochre or hematite, we should expect still to find some distinct 

 traces of its persistent reddish-brown tint. The Indians on the Upper Amazon 

 actually use, we are told, mortars analogous to those from Pe"rigord in grinding 

 and preparing their red pimento. 



We have been informed that lately in Northern California there have been 

 found in the auriferous alluvium*, containing the bones of Mastodon, and 

 underlying the ancient sheets of basaltic lava, some hollowed Mortar-like pebbles 

 similar to these under notice from Les Eyzies, and that these were accompanied 

 by pestles of stone. M. 1'Abbe" Bourgeois has indeed shown us two of these 

 pestles; one is of greenstone, and the other of a hard, black, white-veined stone, 

 highly polished, and bored at one end with a hole for suspension or some other 

 use. M. Simonin also, a member of the Geological Society of France, tells us 

 that, in his travels in California, he has often seen on rock-surfaces hollows 

 (similar to those on the pebbles from Dordogne) that have been made by the 

 Indians to be used as mortars for grinding the maize into a kind of flour, which 

 they mix with a little water and eat cold. 



Stones hollowed for use as Mortars or Mealing-stones, and round, oval, 

 cylindrical, and other stones for Corn-crushers, are frequently mentioned 

 in the descriptions of the Lake-dwellings of Switzerland; but flat slabs, not 

 pebbles, seem to have been always chosen for these cupped or hollowed 

 stones of Switzerland, as is still the case in Africa and elsewhere. (See 

 J. E. Lee's Translation of E. Keller's 'Lake-dwellings of Switzerland,' &c., 

 1866, pp. 25 &c. 



No definite pestles have been found with these Mortar-like stones of Les Eyzies 

 and La Madelaine ; but some oval flattish pebbles of quartz, found in the Caves, 

 and worn on the edge by having been used as knapping- or chipping-stonesf, fit 

 sufficiently well to the concavity of some or other of the hollowed pebbles to 



* At page 252 of his Report on the Geological Survey of California, " Geology," vol. i. (1865), Mr. J. J. 

 Whitney alludes to the works of Man having been frequently found in this gold-bearing gravel, together 

 with bones of Mastodon and Elephant ; and in ' Silliman's American Journal of Science and Arts ' for 

 November 1866, a Human Skull is reported to have been found in this very old valley-gravel. 



t The Knapping-stones, for chipping flints and other materials, whether consisting of natural flattish 

 pebbles of hard rock or of .dressed stone, usually have, on one or more surfaces, little hollows for the fingers 

 and thumb ; but in many specimens from our Caves and elsewhere these pits have been chipped out and 

 remain rough. A small round pebble of granite, from Les Eyzies. has been thus adapted and used ; lor it 



