On the Botany of the Borders. 325 
found to present a rude edge at either end, and to be grooved 
round the middle, for the reception probably of the withe which 
served as its hilt. The splinters which have been split from it 
were, it seems likely, struck off in course of working. 
’ I have had no means of comparing it with the stone celts which 
are not uncommon in collections of antiquities ;* but if I correctly 
remember those I have seen—especially in the interesting anti- 
quarian museum of Mr Lukiss of Guernsey—it has a rude, though 
not distant, resemblance to some of those obtained on the opposite 
coast of the channel. 
These stone hammers are perhaps powerful enough for working 
the decomposing amygdaloidal trap-rock in which most of the copper 
occurs on the shores of Lake Superior ; and numerous as they are, 
they are the only tools which have yet been found there. If any 
others existed, they are however probably made of wood; and the 
action of the influences already aliuded to, during so long a time as 
must have elapsed since the earlier workings, would perhaps have 
sufficed for their destruction. 
I should not have offered so meagre a notice to the Institution, 
but that I thought not devoid of interest in a mining district, a 
memorial, however slight, of the extraction of copper in so distant a 
country at so remote a period. 
3 CLARENCE PLACE, PENZANCE, 
August 19, 1854. 
The Botany of the Eastern Borders, with the popular Names 
and Uses of the Plants, and of the customsand beliefs which 
have been associated with them. By GEORGE JOHNSTON, 
M.D., Edinburgh. London: John Van Voorst, Paternos- 
ter Row, 1853. 
It is well for science that the author of the volume before 
us has thought fit, in the autumn of a busy life, to embody 
his researches in the natural history of his native district. 
In the preface the object of the work is concisely stated. A 
catalogue of its organic productions has been made as complete 
as possible; their limits of distribution and comparative abun- 
z dance have been noted; the importance of giving the local 
_ or provincial names of natural objects as tending to throw 
* During the present summer I have seen many stone celts in Jamaica. They 
z. Seenied to consist of a yery fine-grained and hard greenstone. Locally they 
are called “thunderbolts.” 
