1879. | The Origin of the Domestic Animals. | 747 
Rimers and drills of the usual forms are found, though not in 
great numbers. Most of the perforations found in various speci- 
mens, as banner stones and tubes, were not made by means of 
flint drills, but by sticks of wood, or perhaps hollow reeds and 
sand, or some such process. 
Spear, lance and arrow points are of course more abundant than 
any other class of specimens, and all the varieties figured by Col. 
Foster are found, with others differing from these. Some very 
singular inequilateral forms occur, like those figured by Prof. 
Haldeman in a recent number of the NATURALIST, and many 
others. Indeed a close examination of any large collection of 
flint points, will show that entirely symmetrical forms were rarely 
attained; by far the larger part are more or less unequal, both 
as regards curvature or straightness of the edge and convexity 
of the surfaces. One edge is usually more strongly curved than 
the other, and one surface more convex than the other. Often 
the blade is not in the same plane with the stem, but seems 
twisted upon it, due, as I think, less to the intention of the 
maker than to the fracture of the stone. From these slightly, 
often almost imperceptibly, unequal points, we have every 
gradation to those which are nearly as unsymmetrical as pos- 
sible, and of these latter, some are so well chipped that I can- 
not regard them as “failures,” but for some unknown reason in- 
tentionally of the form we find them. In comparing the specimens 
from the Champlain valley with those from Georgia, figured by 
Mr. Jones, I have been struck with the close resemblance between 
them; there are comparatively few of the objects described in 
“ Antiquities of the Southern Indians,” which cannot be dupli- 
cated, often exactly, in Vermont specimens. This resemblance is 
more noticeable because among Dr. Abbott’s New Jersey speci- 
mens I find many unlike those which we have with us. 
eee. 
THE ORIGIN OF THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
' BY G. DE MORTILLET! 
WE know that the men who lived in our region during the 
long quaternary, or paleolithic period, were autochthones. 
We have seen that they developed slowly, regularly, in a pro- 
gressive, continuous manner, both from a physical as well as an 
1 Translated from Materiaux pour |’ Histoire primitive et naturelle de Homme, — 
1879. 4e et 5e livraisons, * 
VOL. XIII.—NO, XII. 50 
