WEIGHTS FOB DIGGING-STICKS. 157 



one between three and four inches in diameter with a large countersunk 

 hole, as being "just like "the one he had seen so recently in Amherst, I 

 have no doubt as to the character of the stone. Dr. Abbott has also re- 

 cently informed me that there is in a private collection in New Jersey a 

 perforated stone between three and four inches in diameter, which was 

 found in Burlington County in that State, and is in every way like the 

 smooth and well-made examples from California. 



From the foregoing account of perforated stones of various kinds from 

 other parts of the world we can better understand the peculiar character 

 and probable use of those from California, but before describing these in 

 detail I shall cpiote the views of Mr. Paul Schumacher, whose researches 

 have added so largely to our information of all that pertains to the archae- 

 ology of the Pacific coast of the United States. 



In his account of the shellheaps and graves of the Santa Barbara 

 Islands and adjacent mainland,* Mr. Schumacher states that he was told by 

 an "old vaquero, with some Indian blood," that a perforated stone he had 

 considered as a club-head was used "as a weight to the shaft of a wooden 

 spade *, the half-breed was very positive, and earnestly tried to 



impress on us the idea by roughly making the implement used by his 

 ancestors as a spade " Mr Schumacher gives an ideal figuref of this im- 

 plement, which consists of a stick with a flattened and pointed narrow 

 blade, which passes into a rounded handle or shaft, near the upper end of 

 which is placed one of the circular perforated stones. 



In a short paper published after his explorations of the islands in 1877, 

 made under the direction of the Peabody Museum, Mr. Schumacher gives 

 his views about these perforated stones more in detail, as will be seen from 

 the following quotation from the Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody 

 Museum :f 



" Weights fob digging-sticks. — These implements — as are so many others that 

 have a hole, a notch, or other means of fastening a line — are often considered as sinkers. 

 One of the less frequent types of net sinkers, indeed, resembles the weight for a dig- 

 ging-stick, but yet there is as much difference between the two as between a mortar 

 and an (Ala. The sinker is of a different material ; is coarsely finished ; the hole is much 



•Bulletin of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, Vol. Ill, 

 No. 1, p. 41. tX. c, PI. 22, b. f Cambridge, 1878, pp. 265-268. 



