418 Prof. G. H. Stone—Stones of the Salt Range. 
both parallel to the scratches and transverse to them. Particular 
scratches or grooves can be traced for two or three inches across the 
whole facet, though in general the smaller scratches are not so 
distinct as those on the porphyry, and they often become confluent. 
On the planed facet some of the felspar grains preserve their polish, 
except at the edges ; others are weathered so as to be uneven, as also 
are those on the rounded portion of the stone. This specimen shows 
less weathering than Numbers 3 and 4. 
CAUSE OF THE STRIATION AND F'ACETTING. 
_ First.—Al1I who have seen the stones agree that they have a genuine 
and ancient look. They have either been weathered since they were 
scratched, or the surface has been treated with corrosive acids not 
found in the field. The number of places where they have been 
found is inconsistent with such an accident. Most of the scratches 
are too straight and parallel, also too broad and deep to have been 
made by the unassisted hand. The scratches on No. 5 might perhaps 
have been made in such a machine as the arastra. The facets on the 
others might be produced on a grindstone if the stones were held 
very firmly. The stones resemble no stone implement, and are not. 
fashioned for use. If ground by man, it must have been for purposes 
of deception or for grinding something else. In either case it could 
not have been the act of a Paleolithic man, but of one furnished 
with modern machinery. The evidence of the stones points to their 
having been ground and striated a very long time ago. Their 
testimony thus unites with the field evidence as to the distribution: 
of the stones over wide areas, their situations on the tops of moun- 
tains, often remote from places likely to have been inhabited, their 
being found independently by several different observers, their being 
associated with the outcrops of certain boulder-beds, etc., to prove 
that the stones were not the work of man. 
Second.—Some, perhaps all, of the specimens have been subjected 
to a limited amount of polishing since they were facetted. The 
larger inequalities of the fracture-surfaces remain, yet the surface of 
both the projections and the shallower hollows has been distinctly 
smoothed. ‘This is of the same sort as would result from a very 
limited amount of water-wear, also that resulting from soilcap 
movement. For instance, in the Rocky Mountains the miners’ 
“float rock”? is often found from one-fourth of a mile up to one 
mile or more from the parent vein. Reference is made not to the 
stones transported by running water, but to those of the talus or 
angular gravel which covers the slopes of a large portion of the 
mountains. This mass of disintegrated rock is a sort of mineral 
glacier slowly sliding down the mountains, and even the hard vein 
quartz is usually perceptibly smoothed by the attrition of the earth 
and stones with which it has come in contact during its journey. 
The same sort of polish is not seldom found on the harder fragments 
situated on the talus at the base of a scarp of erosion of sedimentary 
rock. During the disintegration of the boulder-bed of the Olive 
group such friction would have helped to smooth the stones in ques- 
