82 
flattening of the two sides of the object. Piers states (a, page 114) that he 
thinks he has heard Noel, a Micmac chief, affirm that these plummets 
were used as a charm to bring fish to a fishing place; that other Indians 
believe they were used as sling-shots; and that an old Micmac woman 
said they were whorls used in spinning beaver fur for cloth to encircle a 
couple as the concluding part of the marriage ceremony. 
Pipes. Pipes of stone or pottery were not found at Merigomish; 
they are rare in Nova Scotia. Loomis (page 41) found only two that are 
of pottery in the shell-heaps which he explored in Maine. However, in 
the Patterson collection there are two whole pipes made of stone and a frag- 
ment of another; one, which may be modern, from Big Island, and the 
fragment from the prehistoric cemetery. There are ten whole pipes made 
of stone — -one probably not of native manufacture, another from outside 
the province — and two unfinished pipes made of stone in the Provincial 
Museum. A stone pipe was found on the farm of Edmund Zwicker about 
half a mile from the Eisenhauer shell-heap near Oakland, Lunenburg 
county. This makes a total of only fifteen known to be from Nova 
Scotia 1 , and several of these appear to be modern. Of those in the Pro- 
vincial Museum, several are of the typical Micmac type, one of the elbow 
type, and one of the platform type. One made of grey soapstone 2 , found 
beneath a copper kettle and closely resembling pipes from southern Ontario, 
suggests that in modern times it was brought to Nova Scotia from the west. 
The modern Micmacs, according to Dawson (a, page 19, Supplement), 
sometimes extemporize a tobacco pipe from a twisted cone of birch bark 
(Plate XXI, figure 7). Dawson suggests that if this habit existed among 
their ancestors, it would account for the comparative paucity of stone 
pipes. 
The specimen from the prehistoric cemetery, Cat. No. 175 in the 
Patterson collection (Plate XX, figure 7), is made of grey soapstone or 
schistose slate, although Patterson refers to it as granitic rock and states 
(c, page 676) that “Dr. Dawson, of McGill college, Montreal, our highest 
authority on the geology of these regions, says that he knows of no rock 
of the same kind nearer than Chaleur bay.” In another place (a, page 236) 
he refers to it as made of a very hard, micaceous clay, with a stem-hole 
nearly 2 inches long. Patterson (c, page 676) states that the form differs 
from any pipe previously found in Nova Scotia, but Sir William Dawson 
directed his attention to a collection from Ottawa river, purchased for 
McGill University, in which were several pipes, if not exactly the same in 
shape, yet plainly of the same type. It is broken and lacks most of both 
bowl and stem. Along the upper surface at each side of the stem an in- 
cised line or fine groove has been made. The stem-hole is about three- 
sixteenths of an inch in diameter. 
Specimen No. 177 in the Patterson collection (Plate XX, figure 8), 
catalogued from Big island, is a pipe bowl made of grey sandstone, and is 
apparently modern. The bowl hole constricts from a point about half 
its depth. There is a small, transverse hole, about three-sixteenths of 
an inch in diameter, through the lower part of the bowl which may have 
1 Cf. Piers (a), p. 115. 
2 Idem (c), pn. 52-56, Pig. 96, PI. III. 
