PREHISTORIC JASPER MINES. 



667 



There the quarryman's work seems to have stopped, if it al- 

 ways went so far, and the hoard of blank blades ready to be fin- 

 ished or specialized by some local arrowhead maker into perfora- 

 tors, arrowheads, spears, or knives, as the case may be, is carried 

 away. When for a time its owner is compelled to part company 

 with it, he buries it in the ground for safe keeping or to render 

 the material softer for future work,* and there for a dozen rea- 



Fig. 5 (about i). — Hammer Stones and Blocked-out Blades. Jasper Mines, Macungie, Pa 



sons it may remain for long years, to be discovered at last by a 

 surprised plowman. 



Such a cache of hitherto " inexplicable " leaf -shape implements, 

 consisting of one hundred and sixteen yellowish argillite blades, 



* But the flint " knappers " at Mr. Robert Snares's gun-flint works at Brandon, Suffolk, 

 England, told me that they always dried the nodules by the fire or in the wind, as the ham- 

 mers would not " take hold " of flint wet from the mines. Argillite, on the other hand, so 

 say the quarry men at Point Pleasant on the Delaware, flakes better when wet, as, in my 

 experience at Macungie, jasper does also. 



