1896.] Piney Branch (D. C.) Quarry Workshop. 989 
creased since, and if now subjected to actual count, would be 
multiplied many times. Many of the specimens, those of 
quartz and quartzite or other refractory material, were rude 
like those from Piney Branch, Holmes’ Pl. IV (P1. XTX), but 
those made of flint or other homogeneous material which 
chipped easily, were smooth and clean, and on comparison 
with paleolithic implements from Europe could scarcely be 
distinguished ; those from Texas and Utah especially so. 
Bearing on this question, I chose 72 specimens out of some 
hundreds of the “double turtle-backs,” as Mr. Holmes calls 
them, collected by Mr. Wm. Hunter from the neighborhood of 
Mt. Vernon, Va.,and have had them photographed and made 
into a Plate XXVII. The specimens on this plate could be 
duplicated from almost any state. A comparison will show 
that the same implements are found in every state in the United 
States. The hammer-stone in the center happens to have been 
from Piney Branch. The introduction of this is to show that 
“the double turtle-backs” are found elsewhere than at Piney 
Branch in considerable numbers; that they are not isolated 
and sporadic, and that they are shapely and regular, even 
when made from the refractory quartzite, so much so as to 
demonstrate them to have been intentional and not accidental 
forms, and were neither “ rejects,” “ refuse,” nor “ failures.” 
V. 
Mr. Holmes refuses to consider the implements as furnish- 
ing any evidence of their own antiquity. He refuses to com- 
pare them with European or other known paleolithic imple- 
ments, or to accept them as paleolithic because of any similar- 
ity of form, appearance, or mode of manufacture. I agree that 
all existing evidence should be presented and I suppose this 
has been done in the present case. Accepting this proposition 
only for the sake of this argument, my reply is that he then 
has no syuionee of antiquity of any portion of the quarry. 
Mr. Holmes contends that great quarry, nigh a quarter of 
a mile square, had ‘been dug over and excavated, (as is shown 
by the section, his Plate I), to an average depth of six feet and in 
many places to eight and nine feet, along the entire hillside 
