1144 The Stone Ax in Vermont, [December, 
remarkable diversity in form, size, material and workmanship. 
Scarcely any two of them are precisely alike, and among them 
may be found European forms like some of those figured by 
Evans, Lubbock, Dawkins and others, as well as forms identical 
in all essential respects with specimens from various portions of 
the United States. Any one who studies stone implements from 
different countries must notice the prevalence of certain common 
types which are repeated in locality after locality, and in ancient 
and modern work alike. 
Very likely the celt had its origin in the hammer stone. This, 
at first a well-worn pebble with no wrought surface, was, after a 
time, rubbed on another bit of stone until at one end a rude edge 
was obtained. When this was accomplished the hammer had 
become an ax. The one tool of its kind possessed by early man, 
it served many purposes, and gradually took upon itself a great 
variety of forms. . 
It was a simple and rude beginning, but it was one of the first, 
steps in that far-reaching series by which man has risen from 
savagery to civilization. 
` Very rude celts, such as are sometimes found in other locali- 
ties, are not common in Vermont collections. A pebble merely 
rubbed at one end until an edge was obtained is not usually the 
form found; far more commonly the entire surface is hammered, 
and not seldom smoothed and polished. Some of our best celts 
are not excelled by our finest specimens of any sort in elegance of 
form or finish. Almost all the more common kinds of rock 
found in Vermont appear in the celts, but some kinds are more 
often found than others, these are trap, greenstone, granite, mica 
schist and talcose schist; less common are quartzite, porphyry. 
serpentine, slate, etc. The hollow chisel, or gouge, is connected 
with the celt by certain peculiar forms which are sharpened like 
a chisel at one end while the other is hollowed! So too we find 
gouges in which the hollow is very slight, and in some scarcely 
noticeable. There is a great diversity in the curvature of the 
edge of our celts, a perfectly straight edge being never found, 
, and a close approximation to it is not common. In the great 
n jority of our specimens the curvature is considerable, much 
ore than is seen in a modern ax. As the celt is connected with 
g ue by certain specimens, so it passes into the regularly 
a1, Vol. xv, +P. 433 Fig. 6. 
