156 PERFORATED STOKES. 



he thinks were used in various ways as sinkers by the Southern Indians. 

 Of these he writes: "All of the perforated sort I have seen, with one ex- 

 ception, were formed either of soapstone or of clay. Consisting generally 

 of flat or rounded pieces of soapstone irregular in shape, they vary in 

 weight from scarcely more than an ounce to a pound and upwards. The 

 perforations are from a quarter of an inch to an inch in diameter, and 

 are indifferently located either in the centre or near the edge of the stone." 

 It seems very probable from their abundance on the banks of the Sa- 

 vannah River and other streams in Georgia that Mr. Jones has assigned 

 the proper use of these perforated stones. A similar piece of steatite, with 

 a central perforation (P. M. 2754) is shown on Plate X, Fig. 10. This is 

 from East Tennessee, and the hole seems to have been made by cutting 

 and gouging with a sharp point of stone, the marks of the cutting imple- 

 ment being still plainly visible. 



Dr. West, of Stewart County, Tennessee, has recently presented to 

 the Peabody Museum a perforated stone (18397), found on his farm, 

 which, in size and shape and character of the large countersunk hole, resem- 

 bles many of the stones from California, but it was made either of a very 

 soft material or is greatly decomposed, and now has a greater resemblance 

 to the rings of clay found in the Swiss lakes than to a club-head. It is 

 nearly 3 inches in diameter and 1^ in thickness. 



Although perforated stones of the character represented by Figs. 22 

 to 38, on Plate X, are so common among the remains of the former inhab- 

 itants of Southern California, I have not seen any of the kind among the 

 numerous collections of stone implements obtained from localities east of 

 the Rocky Mountains. There is, indeed, one specimen in the American 

 Museum, New York, which is without a special label, and may possibly 

 have been found in the Atlantic States, though, as I understood two years 

 ago, it was no longer possible to determine the locality whence it was ob- 

 tained. I have, however, been informed by Mr. N. Vickary, of Lynn, that 

 he had within a few weeks seen one of these stones in the possession of a 

 farmer in North Amherst, Mass., who had several years since ploughed it up 

 on his own land. As Mr. Vickary was looking at the California specimens 

 at the time he made the remark about the Amherst stone, and pointed to 



