SIMILAR STONES FROM CHILI AND PEEIT. 149 



Iu Molina's work on Chili,* referred to by Mr. Darwin in the preced- 

 ing quotation, I find only the following mention of these circular stones : 

 "In the plains and upon most of the mountains are to be seen a great num- 

 ber of flat, circular stones, of 5 or 6 inches in diameter, with a hole through 

 the middle. These stones, which are either granite or porphyry, have 

 doubtless received this form by artificial means, and I am induced to 

 believe that they were the clubs or maces of the ancient Chilians, and that 

 the holes were perforated to receive the handles." Thus Molina does 

 not give any use for the stones from actual knowledge, though he par- 

 ticularly mentions that the Indians at the time he visited the country, about 

 one hundred years ago, used a spade of hard wood, "forcing it into the 

 earth with their breast."f Elsewhere he again states : J "One of their 

 strongest men then attempts to harrow it by means of a machine formed 

 of two large sticks of hard wood made sharp and fastened together, which 

 he forces into the ground with his breast, and thus covers the seed." Among 

 a people still having such primitive agricultural methods, it does not seem 

 probable that the weighted digging-stick would have gone out of use if 

 once employed, and though these large perforated stones may at some time 

 have been used as weights to digging-sticks, yet the fact that they were 

 not so used, a hundred years ago, by a people at that time retaining so 

 many of their old methods of work, renders it probable that the stones were 

 intended for some other purpose, or, if not, that they were used by a people 

 anterior to the Chilian tribes occupying the country at the time of the 

 Spanish discovery. 



Among the specimens in the Peabody Museum is one from Chili (7079) 

 and another from Chimbote, Peru (1 0001), which, judging from their size 

 and the shape of their perforations, may possibly have been weights to dig- 

 ging-sticks, as suggested by Mr. Darwin. They are both represented on 

 Plate X. Fig 2 1 is the one from Chili. It is not perfectly regular in outline, 

 but was evidently worked out of a block of granite. It is about 4 inches 

 in diameter and 'l\ in thickness. The hole is very large, being a little over 

 2 inches across on either face of the stone, and \\ inches in diameter in the 

 centre. There is evidence of considerable wear on one side of the stone, as 

 if caused by a long-continued vertical movement. 



* Translation, American edition, 1808, vol. i, p. 55. t Vol. ii, p. 14. X Page 185. 



