1882 .] 
405 ’ 
[Hoffman. 
unnoticed by the audience, so as to cause them to believe that the 
spirit of the bird responded to the incantations previously made. 
The imitation certainly was a striking one, and it is scarcely to 
be wondered that with a dim light the superstitious observers 
should believe otherwise. 
Mr. F. W. Putnam exhibited a number of interesting stone im- 
plements from Marshfield Mass., which were collected by Mr. Fra- 
zer, last November, in a ploughed field very near the shore. About 
two hundred specimens were found, and were recently obtained 
by the Peabody Museum. The great interest attached to the 
collection is due to the fact that while the implements, which are 
nearly all made from beach pebbles, are perfect and well chipped , 
they are, in general, of rude palaeolithic forms ; that is, as a whole* 
they closely resemble implements found in the gravel drift, both 
in this country and in Europe. 
From their character, many of them might have been made 
equally as well by an ancient people as by the Indians of two 
hundred years ago, and he exhibited the collection in order 
to emphasize the fact that conclusions relating to the anti- 
quity of a collection of implements could not be drawn, at least 
in this country, simply from the character of the implements 
themselves. For here we often find the rude forms so associated 
with those of a higher type that it would be incorrect to state 
that one was older in time than the other. Our recent Indians 
used many rude implements, he said, closely resembling palaeo- 
lithic forms, and they also made and used others that were of the 
highest neolithic type. It is only when the geological conditions 
give us the clew that we are able to determine the age of objects 
ploughed up on the surface or dug out of gravel deposits. 
Mr. Putnam also placed on the table for exhibition several 
rude stone implements from a shell-heap at Sag Harbor N. Y., 
recently received from Mr. Tooker. These, he said, were of par- 
ticular interest for comparison with the specimens from Marsh 
field, as there could hardly be a doubt that the shell-heap from 
which they came was formed by the recent Indians, and that 
these quartz implements were the work of the people who made 
the refuse pile in which they were found. There were also in the 
