230 GILPIN ON THE STONE AGE OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



ledge of those still in use. In cutting their skins and sowing them, 

 they must have used bone implements, now lost. Some northern 

 tribes fix the beaver's tooth into a wooden handle, and even carve 

 stone with its hard enamel. Our Indian no doubt used that as 

 well as bone hooks, and perhaps bone fishing spears. We find no 

 stone fishing spears as are found towards the south, which makes 

 me suppose they made them of bone. The small cannon bone of 

 the moose is well adapted for this. 



The chisels or wedges with long handles as well as the gouges, 

 I think were used also in making arrow-heads. The hollow of the 

 gouge preserving the fine edge. We now know these were made 

 by bedding the stone firmly in wood, and making each chip by a 

 smart blow. The gouge struck by a mallet seems well formed for 

 this work. Some of these chisels may have been fixed in handles, 

 and used as adzes. The pipe bowls speak for themselves. Their 

 numbers are very few in comparison ; and we end with implements 

 which either seem ornamental, as the gorget looking stones which 

 have been suspended around the neck — or the long oval stones 

 which may have been sinkers on fish lines. All these are very 

 rare. The finely polished stone tubes found in one instance only 

 at Dartmouth, have their fellows in the mounds of the Western U. 

 States. We may only conjecture how they came there, as wall as 

 the stone coiled Snake, of which two only are known, and both in 

 the Provincial Museum. 



Of all these, the arrow heads are the most numerous, then the 

 axes, hand axes and chisels, which are about as numerous as the 

 epear and javelin heads, — gouges and unmistakable knives very 

 rare, and the rest exceedingly rare. 



The peculiar Serpent Stones in the Provincial Museum were 

 found upon the surface, about sixty miles apart. The largest is 

 three and one half inches on its long diameter, three on its short, 

 with a very rude resemblance to a snake's head coiled above the 

 tail. The other is about three inches in its long, and two and one 

 half in its short diameter, and closely resembling the other. They 

 are both of marble. There is no tradition of Snake worship, but 

 they evidently appear charms. 



