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40 convex, one being considerably curved and the other curved but little from a straight line, giving them an ungainly and lop-sided form. Their broad ends, originally rounded, probably, like the first fourteen, have been chipped away on each side for half or three-fourths of an inch from the extremity, forming a broad rudimentary shank. At first glance these objects would readily be mistaken for unfinished awkwardly shaped spear-heads; but slight examination proves them to be completed implements, all fashioned after exactly the same pattern, with one end pointed, a greater convexity of one side than the other, and the base which in the first fourteen is regularly rounded, in these has been slightly cut away on each side, perhaps to facilitate their insertion in some sort of handle. The greater rounding out of one side than the other in all cannot be accidental, or due to want of skill in the workmen who made them; and this odd design is not easily reconciled with the ordinary forms and uses of spear points. Occasionally flint arrow-points are found approximating this shape, one side from point to shank describing a slightly curved or straight line with the other side regularly barbed, or curved, as in the common types. In our collection are two specimens somewhat concavo-convex, or sickle-shaped.



It has been gravely suggested that implements of this form were so made, and intended for use, exclusively for spearing and shooting fish, on the hypothesis that the greater weight of one side of the flint, or its irregular form, would give the shaft to which it was attached, when launched, a curved direction, thereby overcoming the water's refraction of the solar rays, and cause the weapon to strike the real and not the apparent position of the fish aimed at.

In order to test this idea I made several experiments with the abnormally shaped flints. Securely fastening the one-barbed arrow-heads in straight, perfectly made arrows, I shot them with a strong sinew-backed Indian bow, at marks in the water and in the air, and found in every instance that the deformed flint had not the least tendency to deflect the shaft from its direct course. I then inserted some of the lop-sided implements from this Clear Creek deposit in light javelin shafts 5 feet or more long, and failed to discover the slightest deviation of flight when thrown either with much or little force in the air or in the water. The result of these experiments led me to conclude that the one barbed arrow-points are merely weapons accidentally mutilated; and the most reasonable view of all the flints in the deposit now under consideration, save the intrusive white spear-point, places them in the general class of common cutting tools.

The second deposit of flints to which I have alluded was also turned up by the plow, on the 28th of March of the present year (1882), on the