PREHISTORIC JASPER MINES. 



667 



There the quarry man's work seems to have stopped, if it al- 

 ways went so far, and the hoard of blank blades ready to be fin- 

 ished or specialized by some local arrowhead maker into perfora- 

 tors, arrowheads, spears, or knives, as the case may be, is carried 

 away. When for a time its owner is compelled to part company 

 with it, he buries it in the ground for safe keeping or to render 

 the material softer for future work,* and there for a dozen rea- 



Fio. 5 (ABOUT i i. II AMMEK STONES AND BLOCKED-OUT BLADES. Jasper Mines, Macungie, Pa 



sons it may remain for long years, to be discovered at last by a 

 surprised plowman. 



Such a cache of hitherto " inexplicable " leaf -shape implements, 

 consisting of one hundred and sixteen yellowish argillite blades, 



* But the flint "knappers" at Mr. Robert Snaros's gun-Hint works at Brandon, Suffolk, 

 England, told me that they always dried the nodules by the fire or in the wind, as the ham- 

 mers would not " take hold " of flint wet from the mines. Argillite, on the other hand, so 

 say the quarry men at Point Pleasant on the Delaware, flakes better when wet, as, in my 



i-xpnienre at Mai-imgu', jasper does also. 



