42 CUP-SHAPED AND OTHER LAPIDARIAN SCULPTURES. 



barbs by means of such a hammer-stone 1 The art of making stone arrow- 

 1 leads, moreover, is no longer a mystery, at least not in the United States, 

 where several methods still are employed by certain western tribes for 

 fashioning them. They probably were mostly chipped into their final shape 

 by pressure with tools of liorn or bone, a number of which, obtained from 

 still existing tribes, can be seen in the United States National Museum. 

 The fine neolithic flint objects of Northern Europe, such as barbed and 

 stemmed arrow and spear-heads, daggers, crescent-shaped implements, etc., 

 doubtless were produced by similar methods. 



Whether the bruised pitted stones were originally designed for ham- 

 mers, or whether, in view of tlie diverse purposes which implements some- 

 times have to serve in the hands of uncivilized man, their rise as hanmiers 

 was a secondary one, are questions upon which I will not enlarge in this 

 jilace.* It is certain, however, that a large number of the pitted stones, 

 usually called hammer-stones in the United States, are perfectly intact at 

 their circumferences, and consequently cannot have served as imagined. 

 Of the many pitted stones in the National Museum, sixty — derived from 

 New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, 

 and California — are now on exhibition, and of these only twelve show the 

 marks of hammering. I'liere is a single pit either on each of the opposite 

 broad sides or only on one side of the stones now considered, and their 

 cavities, differing in size and depth, are not ground, but apparently pro- 

 duced, sometimes quite clumsily, by means of a tool of flint or other hard 

 stone. May not such stones have been used by the aborigines for cracking 

 upon them, by means of other stones, the different kinds of hard-shelled 

 fruits so abundant in North America 1 The cavities mostly are of sufficient 

 depth to hold any kind of nut in place. This kind of work would chiefly 

 have devolved upon women and children (particularly girls), and hence it 

 would not be difl&cult to account for the large number of these stones, f And 



"Tho real North American hammer-stones, I am now inclined to believe, are pebbles or fragments 

 of quartzite or flinty materials, sometimes modified by art and much battered by use. They tell their 

 own story, as it weie. Exactly similar stones are found in Europe. Mr. Evans figures two of them on 

 page 22i! of his well-known work on the stone imiilements, etc., of Great Britain. 



tTtat the method hero indicated was iu vogue among the prehistoric people of Europe is almost 

 demonstrated by Sir Charles Lyell's dcscriprion of a log-cabin, discovered in 1833 by Captain Mudge, K. 

 N., in Drumkellin bog, in Donegal, Ireland, at a depth of fourteen feet from the surface. It was twelve 

 feet square and nine feet high, being divided into two stories, each four fret high. Tho planking 



