176 PERFORATED STONES. 



made, as Mr. Wadsworth has informed me, of talc schist, containing grains 

 of chromite. The talc, being very soft, has worn away and left the chro- 

 mite projecting. The thickness of this specimen is about 1^ inches, and its 

 diameter is nearly 3 inches one way and a quarter of an inch less the other. 

 The stone has been carefully fashioned and the sides of the hole are straight 

 from face to face. The diameters of the hole are 1 inch and 1£ inches. 



Fig. 24 represents one obtained by Mr. Schumacher on the island of 

 San Nicholas (P. M. 9352). It is of dark steatite, and of nearly the same 

 size as the one from Dos Pueblos, being- 1£ inches thick and about 2£ in 

 diameter. The hole is an ellipse, 1 inch by 1 J in its diameters ; its sides 

 are perfectly straight, and show many parallel and longitudinal striations. 

 One face is smoother than the other, though it is not polished. That shown 

 in the figure is uneven as if broken by use. As a weight to a digging- 

 stick this stone is too light to be of service except to a child, and the great 

 amount of use it has had is not favorable to that conclusion. As a whorl 

 it is also obviously not adapted ; and it seems more likely to have been 

 used for some purpose which required that it should be moved loosely up 

 and down on a shaft of wood or bone. Another, with an oval hole, is 

 from the island of San Clemente (P. M. 13525). In this the perforation 

 is not quite an inch wide by 1^ in length, and has straight sides. This 

 specimen is 3^ inches in diameter, but its original thickness can only be 

 approximated, as it has been broken, and probably is not now over half 

 its original thickness, the fracture having been nearly transverse to the 

 perforation. The character of the fracture, which is an old one, favors 

 the view that this stone was used as a club-head. 



Another specimen from San Clemente, also collected by Mr. Schumacher, 

 is of steatite, and is 1^ inches in thickness and 2f in diameter. The ellip- 

 tical hole has two straight sides, and is ^ of an inch wide by 1^ in length. 

 One face of this stone is more level and smoother than the other. 



A third specimen from the same lot as the last (P. M. 13522) is also 

 of steatite. It is 2 inches in thickness and 3^ in diameter. One face is 

 flattened, perfectly smooth, and slightly polished. Surrounding the hole 

 on this face is a depressed portion, about half an inch wide, which is per- 

 fectty smooth. The perforation is egg-shaped in outline, and of the same 



