374 Canadian Record of Science. 



rough pieces which he thought to be nephrite. Thanks to 

 the courtesy of Mr. Bastian, I was enabled to examine, 

 microscopically, splinters of this mineral. The worked 

 object which furnished me splinters, is a chisel which Capt. 

 Jacobsen obtained on Queen Charlotte Islands. In its micro- 

 structure this nephrite does not at all differ from that 

 described above. According to Capt. Jacobsen, there are 

 also objects of this green nephrite all over Vancouver Island 

 and in the Chilkat territory on the continent. 



After describing the colours of the objects, Prof. Arzruni 

 continues : — " ' Capt. Jacobsen states that the rough stone is 

 obtained at five days' journey inland. He did not visit the 

 spot himself, though he knows the position of the rocks. 

 The best of the extracted pieces are chosen for working. 

 Only two Eskimo shamans know the locality, and keep it 

 secret. Of the rough pieces obtained and supposed to be 

 nephrite, two proved to be such, namely, numbers 407 and 

 409. No. 407 is described by Mr. E. Krause as a rolled 

 pebble or boulder, which, by the whetting of knives, etc. ; 

 on it, has been superficially ground, but not for the pur- 

 pose of working it. A slice of this piece presented a micro- 

 scopic appearance quite analogous to that of the slices 

 from the two nephrite implements previously described. 

 No. 409, on the contrary is, according to Mr. Krause, a 

 small piece of nephrite, altogether Untouched for the pur- 

 pose of working. It agrees in all points with No. 407 

 It is of a beautiful green, semi-translucent, of a structure 

 somewhat laminated, and with magnetite inclusions. It 

 was found during Caj)t. Jacobsen's stay at Norton Bay, 

 near St. Michael, at the Kwichpak mouth, about twenty 

 miles north of the Yukon river, and is a rolled pebble. A 

 quite similar structure is seen, according to Mr. Krause, in 

 No. 408 of the collection, a boulder or rolled stone, which 

 has been used in its natural shape as a whetstone, whereby 

 it has been superficially smoothed. In reference to the 

 absence of any other rough specimen, Capt. Jacobsen re- 

 marks that nephrite constitutes for these people their most 

 valuable property, which they naturally do not allow to lie 

 unutilised, any more than we ourselves our money, but 



