PE wee nate RAS aan ee 
_ blotches of red moss, Both of these varieties of stone are found thro 
: "ginal and prehistoric race is somewhat surprising, 
_ ‘BMiseded by the percussion cap. ‘This fact, however, 
frang although we know that no official expeditions have pas 
T Juan) 
ka doubt whether it has been inhabited since 
1876.] Anthropology. 691 
observations are called in question by Dr. Mayer, who, however, so far 
as we know, has never published any observations on the embryology 
of this or any other animal, the entire essay being based on facts ob- 
served by previous writers. 
While the essay is interesting and suggestive, the leading idea that 
hexapodous insects first appeared as winged organisms and not as larval 
forms, will, we think, be found to have no valid foundation. We 
should with as much reason derive the acalephs from an ancestral free- 
swimming medusa, and not from a hydra-like form, or the Amphibia 
ftom the tailless rather than the tailed forms, views with which we 
imagine few zodlogists would agree. — A. S. PACKARD, JR. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
ABORIGINAL (?) Gun-Fiints, — Among the ancient ruined buildings 
of Utah and Arizona I picked up two curious objects of stone, the use of 
which I for some time was unable to determine. At first I supposed them 
to have been arrow-points or scrapers which had been broken at the points, 
leaving the square buts, but on careful examination I found that they had 
each been laboriously chipped on the four edges, and from their general 
appearance had undoubtedly been used as gun-flints. In order to satisfy 
myself on this point, I procured a large number of modern flints made by 
the whites, and on comparison I found that the two from the West resem- 
bled them closely in size and shape, only differing in material and in the 
manner in which they had been flaked. They are from one eighth to one 
fourth of an inch in thickness, number one being thickest at the lower or 
_ Sitiking edge and number two at the upper. The material of number one 
(by far the finer specimen) isa light gray flint with white and pink water 
markings. That of number two is a pink agate sprinkled with specks y 
ugh- 
out the West, and objects manufactured from them are numerous amongst 
7 ruins. They are not to be found, except in rare cases, if at all, in the 
fastern portion of the United States, and we may therefore reasonably 
“uppose that the flints were made on the Pacific slope. That such objects 
s z civilized people should occur among the rude implements of an abo- 
especially when it has 
'eretofore been supposed that this particular section has not been trav- 
ersed by whites until the past few years, when the 
sed over this 
Ty, it is possible that hunters or wandering scouts may have visited 
‘~ ruins of the San Juan Valley. The district in which I found the 
à nd has not been occupied by tribes of Indians for many years, as it 1s 
g ren, dry desert, devoid of water (with the exception of the warm 
and almost destitute of grass and wood. It is, indeed, a mat- 
the disappearance of the 
© race which built and occupied the old houses which have been 
