116 FOSSIL MEN. 



Sea Islanders. I have a very fine one of calcareous 

 spar from the New Hebrides, and very neatly formed 

 and effective specimens made of heavy iron ore are 

 found on American Indian sites. They occur also 

 among the relics of the Stone age in Scandinavia. If 

 slings properly so-called were used by European pre- 

 historic men, it is likely that, like David of old, they 

 contented themselves with smooth stones from the 

 brook, and did not waste their labour in shaping 

 round stones to be lost the first time they were 

 thrown. The American Indians were, however, in 

 the habit of heaping stones in the inside of their forts 

 to be thrown at their enemies either by hand or by a 

 sling, and it has been suggested that some of the 

 heaps of chipped flints noticed by Foster and by 

 Squier as found in Ohio and Illinois may have been 

 collected for this purpose, though, it is perhaps more 

 likely that they were magazines of unfinished wea- 

 pons. 



One implement of the Flint age which has recently 

 attracted much attention, and which has been elabo- 

 rately discussed in the beautiful work of -Messrs. 

 Lartet and Christy, is the pogamaugan, or striker, 

 an absolutely universal weapon of the rude hunter 

 and warrior in all ages and countries. One of its 

 earliest forms is that of an antler trimmed into the 

 shape of a sort of pick or hammer, and this, still in 

 use among the Western Indians, occurs under pre- 

 cisely the same form in the cave deposits of the 

 Reindeer period in France. The primitive hunter 



