Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/686

 we found, in 1891, on Ridges Island, on the Delaware; another of one hundred and seven of blue argillite was obtained for us by Mr. Doan, at Bridge Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, last May, and another of nine blanks of chert was found by us in June of last year, on an island in the Susquehanna; while on the other hand that the material was sometimes carried away from the mines in the rough, was proved to us by the discovery of a large nodule partly chipped at the village site of Upper Blacks' Eddy, on the Delaware, ten miles from Durham, and another smaller mass on the river shore at Fry's Run.

The story of the Lehigh jasper quarries thus glanced at, but soon to be fully and carefully studied, is thus far a corroboration in main of the recent researches of Mr. W. H. Holmes at Piney



Branch, in the Indian Territory, and in Garland County, Arkansas. Is it the story of all jasper (quarries in the United States? Is it the story as well of the argillite sandstone and quartzite quarry sites and the obsidian workings not yet discovered and studied? In a word, are we right in supposing that this process of passing from the shapeless block (Fig. 7) to the "turtleback," and from the "turtleback" to the thin, leaf-shaped blank, and thence to the spear or finished implement, represents the necessary steps through which all peoples in an age of stone have passed in the fashioning of their rock-hewn tools?

Thirty years ago Indians were chipping arrowheads of obsidian and hornstone on the shores of the Sacramento. Many of them still live in the United States and Canada who can doubtless explain the whole matter. Sometimes their opinion has been asked