143 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



North-west as fuel-breakers, as has been stated by a cor- 

 respondent of " Science," it does not follow that here in 

 New Jersey our Indians broke their wood with such 

 exceedingly awkward tools. A stone axe, with a well- 

 sharpened edge, was too common an object among them 

 not to have been put to such uses, instead of reserved 

 exclusively for cracking skulls. Again, these notched 

 pebbles have too frequently been found in alluvial de- 

 posits, so associated as to show that a large number of 

 them were used together, as in weighting fish -nets. 

 Here it would appear that a net had been lost or for- 

 gotten, and all traces of it had subsequently disappeared 

 except the pebbles that were once attached to it. 



But what more than all the stone implements that I 

 gathered — a hundred or more — intensely interested me, 

 were the remains of fishes and birds that were scattered 

 all through the fire-discolored earth. 



I gathered every bone and fragment of one that I 

 could find, and after much labor finally determined the 

 great majority to be the remains of the shad, rockfish, 

 white-perch, catfish, and sunfish. I found also a few 

 scales and a fragment of the jaw of the great bony gar 

 and of the sturgeon. 



Of the bird-bones, those identified were of geese and 

 herons, except a single specimen which, although much 

 broken, was ascertained to be the breastbone of a peli- 

 can. Of this bone, more hereafter. 



It was after a study of these fish-bones that I became 

 convinced that in Indian times our fishes attained a 

 much larger size than now. Sunfish or bream were then 

 frequently caught, which measured eight and nine inches 



