152 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



may be raised, and we are justified in making all possible inqui- 

 ries. It is a pick-like object, some six inches long, and perhaps 

 two inches thick toward the larger end. The head is rounded, 

 as if intended to fit the hand, and there is even an appearance, 

 deceptive, no doubt, as will appear further on, of abrasion by 

 use. The sides are neatly flaked, the apparent result of blows 

 by a hammer, many of which seem to have served only to bat- 

 ter the edges, while others appear to have removed a series of 

 flakes extending along the shaft from the head to near the point. 

 The smaller end of the object is worthy of especial notice; the 

 point, which probably was originally sharply pyramidal, has been 

 removed by an oblique fracture, leaving a clean, unworn surface. 

 A portion of the surface adjacent to the truncated point has not 

 been shaped by flaking, but retains the original minutely gran- 

 ular weathered surface, indicating that the stone before flaking 

 or remodeling was already pointed. The object was therefore 

 not used after the breaking of the point, as the unworn fracture 

 shows, and the presence of the unaltered original surface adja- 

 cent to the present point would seem to prove that it never was 

 subjected to use. The material appears to be a fine-grained, 

 light-colored limestone, having a conchoidal fracture. It is soft 

 and brittle, and is not likely to have been employed in making 

 tools, and especially pick-like tools. This observation leads to 

 an inquiry as to whether it is possible that the flaking could have 

 been the result of natural agencies, such, for instance, as the 

 crushing and abrading forces exerted by moving ice. Could a 

 pointed bit or mass of brittle limestone have been so squeezed 

 between moving impinging rocks as to remove these flakes and 

 to produce the battered and rounded effect seen upon the edges 

 and head, respectively, of this object without affecting the point, 

 save to break it, and without breaking the shaft elsewhere? 

 That natural forces do occasionally produce forms resembling 

 those of art is well known, and that archaeologists have at times 

 been rash in accepting such as artificial cannot be denied. 



To more fully inform myself upon this topic I made careful 

 examinations of the contents of the moraine from which por- 



