FOWKE] ABORIGINAL FLINT QUARRIES 533 
bluff more than 100 feet high. This heavy-bedded limestone is 
being quarried extensively, giving fresh exposures from top to bot- 
tom, and thereby bringing into view several seams of grayish chert, 
variable in thickness from a streak to as much as 8 inches. In 
places it pinches out entirely, to reappear at the same level farther 
along, sometimes within a few inches, sometimes with an interval of 
several feet. Occasionally these changes are so abrupt as to give a 
nodular or concretionary appearance to parts of the deposit; but 
such masses, when broken open, present a structure entirely similar 
to that of the more regular parts of the stratum to which they be- 
long. None of this chert is suitable for chipping, as it is full of 
minute crevices, crystals, and cavities, which cause it to break in 
unforeseen places and directions. These defects are less apparent 
in fragments freshly broken from the quarry face; but the primitive 
artisan, unable to make his way through the overlying limestone, 
had access only to such pieces as were released by weathering. 
It was on this bluff that the famous “ Thunder Bird ” was painted. 
Three miles above Alton, on an overhanging bluff, are the last 
faint remains of the aboriginal paintings which once occurred in 
considerable numbers in this vicinity. At the foot of the cliff is a 
projecting ledge which furnished a standing place for the early 
artist. In this ledge, a few feet below the top, is a stratum filled 
with chert nodules, some of them almost perfect spheres. Their 
vertical range is not more than 2 feet at any point. They are em- 
bedded in solid rock and begin to disintegrate as soon as they are 
brought to the air by decay of the matrix, breaking into small frag- 
ments while still partially inclosed. A little lower is a stratum of 
chert equally brittle; so that neither deposit was serviceable to the 
arrow maker. 
The dip of the strata here is from the river toward the east, and 
there is no tributary valley cut deep enough to bring any of this 
chert to the surface elesewhere than in the face of the bluff. 
Funt 1N Jerrerson County, Mo. 
The village of Crescent, Mo., is at the point where the St. Louis- 
San Francisco Railway crosses the Meramec River, 25 miles west of 
St. Louis. The next station east of this is Mincke, about 2 miles 
away. Between these two places a hill nearly 400 feet high, sep- 
arating ravines which have cut down almost to the water level, 
terminates abruptly in a steep face abutting upon the river. It 
extends to the southward as a narrow ridge, from which numerous 
spurs branch off, all of them winding in various directions and all 
of them ending steeply within half a mile or less from the main 
ridge. The summits are capped with white chert, the resistant 
