28 Field and Forest Rambles. 



explanation, at all events as regards Canada. At the same 

 time, it is not improbable that either partially or wholly the 

 same may apply to certain regions of the Old World, where 

 the two are found together. 



In New Brunswick, as elsewhere in North America, there does 

 not appear to be any evidence of a Bronze Period. Although 

 copper is met with in small quantities in the Devonian strata, 

 and was known to the aborigines, they seem only to have 

 used it as an ornament to adorn their persons. The Iron Age, 

 as before stated, came in rapidly, indeed so quickly that the 

 present generation is ignorant of stone implements having been 

 used by their forefathers, just as much apparently as we are 

 of the owners of the flint tools of Europe. The iron toma- 

 hawk, therefore, soon took the place of the greenstone celt, 

 and was their chief object of barter with the early French 

 voyagers and traders. Thus the long, narrow, adze-shaped 

 iron hatchet, stamped with a " Fleur-de-lis," * is occasionally 

 picked up along the great river valleys. 



Referring to what may be called types of the weapons and 

 implements of stone used by the Indians of New Brunswick, 

 the arrow heads, figs. I, 2, and 3, represent the usual pattern. 

 No. 2 seems to have been used extensively, and is always 

 the best finished, with an acute point and sharp cutting edges. 

 The smaller point, fig. 3, made of white quartz, chipped or 

 polished, is also not uncommon, and occasionally all may be 

 collected in the same situation. 



Fig. 5 represents a very rudely shaped spear head, nearly 

 nine inches in length, from an old encampment on the Tobique 

 river, where the natives, and their foes the Mohawks, were 

 wont to engage in desperate fights. 



Stone hatchets of divers size, some very finely polished, 

 such as fig. 6; others are so rudely fabricated that, unless used 

 for wedges or ice axes, it would be difficult to imagine the pur- 



* I have seen specimens of this adze from the banks of the Miramichi 

 River. 



