1896.] Piney Branch (D. C.) Quarry Workshop. 977 
have not ventured upon the determination of these ques- 
tions of prehistoric ages and races. with the confidence of Mr. 
Holmes, and certainly they do not decide these important 
questions with even a fraction of the satisfaction and certainty 
which seems to have inspired him. 
Mr. Holmes did not content himself with the things of to- 
day which he saw in the quarry, but turned his mind’s eye back 
when the quarry was being made and depicts it in the time of 
antiquity, with apparently as much certainty as if he had 
been then and there present. He not only describes the work 
with the detail and positiveness I have shown, telling the 
periods to which it belonged and the race and culture of the 
men who did the work, but he assumes to decide upon the ob- 
jects not there. He determines not only upon what was left 
in the quarry, but he decides with equal positiveness upon the 
ultimate purpose and intention of the workman and the future 
use and destination of the implements which had been trans- 
ported elsewhere. 
He describes in several places the leaf-shaped blade—the 
“third stage” of his process—straight and symmetrical, with 
edges as slightly beveled as consistent with strength, less than 
half an inch in thickness and shown in å to p, Pl. IV (my Pl. 
XIX), and says “ when they were realized, the work of this shop 
was ended” (XX), “they, and they only, were carried away 
to destinies we may yet reveal” (p.13). “ No examples of the 
successful quarry products were left upon the ground ” (p. 15). 
“ All forms available for further shaping or immediate use were 
carried away as being the entire product of the shop * 
for final finishing” (p.15). “This was a stage of advance- 
ment which made them portable and placed them fully within 
reach of processes to be employed in finishing, and that they 
had been carried away to the villages and buried in damp 
earth (cached), that they might not become hard and (or) brit- 
tle before the time came for flaking them into the forms re- 
quired in the arts. The history of the quarry forms is not 
completed, however, until we have noted their final distribution 
among the individuals of the various fribes, until we have witnessed 
the final step in the shaping process—the flaking out of specific 
