THE STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY. ; 221 
a multiplicity of uses. The edge being the prominent charac- 
teristic of the specimens, cutting must have been the principal 
object in the making, and therefore we call them “knives.” Com- 
menting on a collection of antiquities forwarded to him from this 
neighborhood, Sir John Lubbock remarks, “the absence of flakes 
and true scrapers surprises me. How do you account for it? Is 
there no flint in the neighborhood?” There is no flint in the neigh- 
borhood, and as jasper, slate and sandstone do not flake off as 
readily and conveniently as flint proper, so we do not have in the 
abundance characteristic of European ‘‘ finds,” true “flakes” and 
= _ “scrapers” such as may have been made by almost a single blow; 
and so too, our knives, if those we have figured be knives, have 
hot a smooth edge, as a single plane of Fig. 76. 
cleavage produces, but still would surely 
be effective for most of the uses to which 
any ‘‘flint” knife could be put. The 
specimens are always of an elongated, 
oval outline, and vary little from three 
inches in length by one and one-half in s 
width | 
th. 
Both sides are equally smoothly chip- 
n some specimens, indeed in 
- quite a large number, there is more of a 
curve to one side than the other, ap- 
proaching in this the general appearance 
of the semi-lunar knives found in Swe- 
den. (See Nilsson’s “ Stone Age,” plate i 
V, figs. 88-9.) Figure 75 shows this anarai 
_ More, perhaps, than any other specimen in our collection. Mr. 
_ Lubbock has figured in “ Prehistoric Times” (page 490, fig. 214), 
æ Esquimaux knife, that certainly can be duplicated without diffi- 
culty, without the handle. Many of the more elongated leaf-shaped 
_ Mrows, that had lost their points, might have been thus used, by 
_ Pltcing the broken end in a bone handle and so converting the 
as base and sides into the edges of a knife blade. As we do not 
_ “Men find arrowheads which give evidence of having been re- 
o pointed, perhaps very many of the specimens now found without 
_ Pelnts were once inserted into bone handles, which latter have 
. long since crumbled into dust. 
rie PERS.— Every collection of flint implements found in Eu- 
. 
