272 RELICS OF A HOMESTEAD OF THE STONE AGE. 
In about such positions, each rude relic telling its own story as 
plainly as ever do the contents of a carefully opened grave, we 
lately had the Sood fortune to find a “ deposit” of stone imple- 
ments, numbering in all, about one hundred and seventy specimens. 
The discovery of this deposit was made on the removal of the 
brow or face of a low bluff, and filling up of a shallow valley, that 
a more level road might be run through the property. A little 
brook, almost dry in summer, rippled through the valley; which 
stream was no doubt of much greater volume when the aborigines 
dwelt upon its banks. 
The relics of this *‘ find” were met with in a circumscribed spot 
of about thirty feet in diameter, and some twenty inches below the 
surface of the ground. The floor of this ‘*‘ homestead,” as we 
have called it, was very hard and compact; the soil being of & 
darker color than the superincumbent earth, and well mixed with 
small oval gravel stones, of a noticeably uniform size. At one 
side of the nearly circular spot was a well defined fire-place, marked 
by a circle of oval white stones, six to eight inches in length, and 
half that in thickness. Within this circle was a layer of ashes 
and charcoal, seven inches deep in the centre, and three at the 
margin of the fire-place. This coal and ash deposit showed, on 
careful examination, a considerable percentage of minute frag- 
ments of mussel shell, and of small fragments of bones, too much 
splintered to identify, but apparently the long bones of wading 
birds and of the larger fishes. 
Of the stone implements, the most noticeable specimen, on ac- 
count of size, was the large “ corn-mill;” a heavy quartzite (?) 
stone, some fifteen inches in length by ten in width. It was lying 
in a shallow depression in the floor of the homestead, at the right 
hand side of the fire-place, and within a foot of the row of white 
stones that marked that feature of the “find.” The mill had but 
a slight depression on its upper surface, not a quarter of an 
inch deep, yet clearly traceable on examination, and had evi- 
dently been but little used’ Lying near it, were two crushing 
stones, one of which was undoubtedly used in connection with the 
“ mill.” It is a flat, nearly circular pebble, about four and one- 
half inches in diameter. One surface is merely levelled off, by 
constant rubbing, rather than pecked first and then ground. The 
opposite side has been pecked over the greater part of its surface, 
and the centre of the levelled surface.has been somewhat hollowed 
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