BAKING PANS OF STEATITE. 103 



than a culinary one, the specimen is interesting as showing how readily 

 one well-known form merges into another. This was also collected by Mr. 

 Schumacher on Santa Catalina Island. (Peabody Museum, 9269.) 



These cooking utensils of steatite from the coast of California and the 

 adjacent islands must not be confounded with the beautifully wrought 

 circular and quadrangular plates found in the interior of the country. 

 The latter are usually decorated with incised lines and marginal notches, 

 and we are not yet warranted in considering them cooking utensils ; 

 their elaborate workmanship and regularity of form rather suggesting 

 that they were designed for other and more ornamental purposes than the 

 perforated slabs we have just described. 



An implement of steatite, said to have been lately found in New 

 Jersey, is, in all respects, similar to the smaller comali here described ; its 

 size alone renders it doubtful whether the proposed name is in this case 

 properly applied. That it was used simply as a heating-stone with which 

 to bring water to a boiling point, after the well-known method of many 

 savage tribes, is not probable, as it is too small to be of much use in this 

 way, and it is not so well adapted to that purpose as are the perforated flat 

 pebbles of irregular shapes and sizes which occur in great abundance in 

 the immediate vicinity of where this wrought steatite implement is said to 

 have been found. The latter have been considered, we think with good 

 reason, as heating or boiling stones, although they have also been regarded 

 as perforated sinkers. 



[Among the articles received by the Peabody Museum from Mr. 

 Schumacher's explorations of 1877 on the islands of San Clemente and 

 Santa Catalina, are numerous small plates made of steatite, similar to 

 those described above by Dr. Abbott. Several of these are rudely orna- 

 mented by deeply incised lines or by raised surfaces, while others show 

 transitions to implements of other characters, particularly to the grooved 

 stones which have been called " arrow-shaft straighteners,'' and some even 

 pass into small, oblong, cup-like vessels. From a study of these specimens 

 it appears that many of these stones, having one or more holes, were used 

 for purposes where a heated stone was required, and that the hole was 

 simply intended to afford the means of taking the stone from the fire. 



