96 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



are nearly all made from a yellowish mottled flint, which, as I have been 

 informed, occurs some considerable distance inland. The largest specimen is 

 8 inches long and 3 inches broad, flat on one side, as most of them are. After 

 the lengthwise fracture, doubtless by one blow for each surface, a number of 

 smaller blows were given, in order to form as many indentations upon the edge, 

 by which the tool was converted into a kind of saw. This implement, like 

 several others of a smaller size, but of the same type, w r as most probably used 

 to cut or saw through the sinews, or other tough portions of the birds or seals. 



Others have the form of knives and scrapers, and others resemble spear 

 heads. The specimens from the sands and ashes taken above high-water mark 

 have a remarkably fresh appearance, while those lying in the deposits below 

 high-water mark have a thick coating of patina, or, better stated, are eaten 

 into considerably by the effects of the brackish water. 



Of those remarkable primitive stone knives, broken off from a boulder by 



a single blow, and which are so very numerous in the Rakaia encampment, I 



obtained only two. 



They consist of a fine-grained basaltic rock, and were evidently broken 

 from a large boulder. 



I may here mention, that in looking through the fine and interesting 

 volume of the " United States Geological Survey of 1872," published by Dr. 

 Hay den, I was very much struck with the following passage, page 653, in the 

 article " On Remains of Primitive Art in the Bridger Basin of Southern 

 Wyoming," by Professor Jos. Leidy. " I may take the opportunity of speak- 

 ing of a stone implement of the Shoshone Indians, of so simple a character that 

 had I not observed it in actual use, and had noticed it amongst the material 

 of the buttes, I should have viewed it as an accidental spawl. It consists of a 

 thin segment of a quartzite boulder, made by striking the stone with a smart 

 blow. The implement is circular or oval with a sharp edge, convex on one 

 side, and flat on the other. It is called a 6 teshoa,' and is employed as a 

 scraper in dressing buffalo skins. By accident, I learned that the implement 

 is not only modern, as I obtained one of the same character, together with 

 some perforated tusks of the elk, from an old Indian grave, which had been 

 made on the upper end of a butte, and had become exposed by the gradual 

 wearing away of the latter." 



The figure of this "teshoa," a name which I wish to adopt for similar stone 

 implements in New Zealand, is so like one of the latter that it would be im- 

 possible to distinguish them if placed side by side. At the same time, I wish 

 to observe that the description and figures of the flint-flakes, roughly chipped, 

 found in Indian graves, etc., are so much like those obtained in the Moa-hunter 

 encampments that there is no doubt that the former aborigines of New Zealand 



