1881.] Aboriginal Stone-Drilling. 539 
to drill from one side only, the bore would have assumed a coni- 
cal shape. I simply turned the improvised tool with the hand 
like a gimlet, exerting a moderate pressure, and wetting the cav- 
ity from time to time with water. During the operation very 
diminutive particles of the drilling tool came off with a slight 
crack, and the flint showed afterward scarcely any wear. This 
fact is worth noting, as it accounts for the fresh appearance of 
many flint tools which undoubtedly have served for drilling 
purposes. 
Any one who has handled a large number of North American 
flint implements must be aware that there are some which approach 
in outline more or less the arrow-head shape, but exhibit a 
rounded edge instead of a point. They might often be taken for 
cutters; yet many of them, I am now inclined to believe, served as 
tools for boring stone of inferior hardness, the curved extremity 
forming, of course, the penetrating part of the drill. My view is 
based upon the fact that an implement of this kind actually has 
been found in the unfinished bore of an aboriginal stone object, 
now in possession of Mr. James Wood, of Mount Kisco, West- 
chester County, New York. Last year that gentleman, who is 
President of the Westchester County Historical Society, was kind 
enough to send the partly-drilled specimen, together with the 
drill, for examination to the Smithsonian Institution, where I 
caused drawings of both to be made. The objects were found at 
Croton Point, on the Hudson, in Westchester County, by Mr. 
Wood’s cousin, a lad about thirteen years of age, whose veracity 
cannot be doubted, and who is not at all given to collecting abo- 
riginal relics, of which, indeed, he has no knowledge. The genu- 
ineness of the discovery is beyond any suspicion. 
Figure 1 shows the character of the drilled object, which is a 
rather rude exemplification of a type not unfrequent in the United 
States, and represented by a number of specimens in the archzo- 
logical collection of the National Museum, where I have classed 
them for the present with the drilled ceremonial weapons, some- 
times very inappropriately called “ banner-stones.”” 
The specimen in question consists of chloritic potstone, a very 
Soft material, which could easily be fashioned and drilled. The 
‘A specimen not unlike the original of Figure 1, though larger and of a more 
regular shape, was found in the town of Monkton, Vermont. It is figured and de- 
Scribed in « Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
fnce ’’ (Twenty-eighth meeting, August, 1879); Salem, 1880, p. 526, etc. 
