114 FOSSIL MEN. 



round or oval in cross-section, and suited to be held 

 in the hand, though, perhaps, in some cases lashed to 

 a wooden handle. It much resembles the ordinary 

 stone axe or celt, but differs in having a blunt end, 

 indented with blows, instead of an edge. This 

 almond-shaped hammer was employed to chip stones, 

 to drive wedges, and to break nuts and bones. One 

 example from Hochelaga has a rough depression on 

 one side, which may have been produced by hammer- 

 ing wedges with the side instead of the end, or may 

 have been intended to give a better hold to the end of 

 the handle. Hammers precisely of this kind are found 

 in the caves of Perigord and in Sweden. The savages 

 of all countries seem to have discovered that dioritic 

 rocks, from the toughness of the crystals of hornblende 

 which they contain, are specially suited for the forma- 

 tion of these hammers, so that wherever greenstone 

 can be found it is employed. 



The third and most artificial kind of stone hammer 

 is that with a groove around it, by means of which it 

 could be attached to a handle or slung upon a tough 

 withe. Such a hammer is sometimes merely an oval 

 pebble with a groove worked around it, but some ex- 

 amples, especially those of the old mound-builders, are 

 elaborately grooved and carefully shaped; and there 

 are some with two grooves, the working of which must 

 have cost much labour. Some specimens are so small 

 as to weigh only a few ounces, and one from the 

 ancient copper mines of Lake Superior, now in the 

 museum of the Geological ^Survey of Canada, is 11 J 



