206 icments [March, 



The nearness of the outcropping country-rock to the spring.' 

 and to the chief articles of food, operated, quite likely, to prevent; 

 that degree of development in stone working which is found in, 

 such implements among the relics of nearly related and geo- 

 graphically approximate tribes. 



There was no imperative necessity, nor anything to be gained 

 by the careful and laborious finishing of portable mortars where 

 the material requiring trituration was abundant and close at hand, 

 making a permanent settlement possible, where otherwise only a 

 temporary camp could be made, dependent for duration upon the 

 extent of the mast or nut-harvest or acorn-crop. 



The mortars herewith figured, with, as before remarked, only 

 the capacity of a common saucer, are in stones which weigh 

 from thirty to fifty pounds. If these had belonged to a tribe 

 within whose domain the acorn and nut-bearing trees were widely 

 scattered, and thereby compelled to be more roving in their 

 habits than the tribe which inhabited the region herein described, 

 the mortars would probably have been smaller in bulk and conse- 

 quently lighter in weight. To perpetrate a hibernicism, a portable 

 acorn mortar of corresponding size and weight as related to 

 capacity, would not be portable. Where the food conditions are as 

 above indicated, the mill would of necessity have to be carried to 

 the grist, instead of the grist to the mill ; this would compel the 

 carrying of pulverizing implements, and lead not only to a reduc- 

 tion in the weight of such utensils, through finishing the exterior 

 by cutting away every superfluous pound of stone, but also to 

 the careful selection of pieces of stones or cobbles of a more 

 compact and solid quality, so as to combine the greatest strength 

 with the least weight. 



This also explains why mortars and pestles are so frequently 

 met with in places near which the evidences of an aboriginal 

 camp or settlement do not exist. 



That the tribe which inhabited this Howell mountain locality 

 were not as expert in this class of stone working as those even of 

 the not distant Calistoga and Knight's valley region, the Ash-o- 

 chi-mis, or Wattos, is proven by the mortars collected by me at 

 the last named place in August, 1879 \ f° r though the lot of half 

 a dozen included one specimen hollowed in a rough stone, of the 

 same general type as those figured in this paper, it also embraced 

 specimens worked in well selected cobbles, and one hollowed in 

 end of a section of a basaltic column. This latter as well as the 



