Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/166

may be raised, and we are justified in making all possible inquiries. It is a pick-like object, some six inches long, and perhaps two inches thick toward the larger end. The head is rounded, as if intended to fit the hand, and there is even an appearance, deceptive, no doubt, as will appear further on, of abrasion by use. The sides are neatly flaked, the apparent result of blows by a hammer, many of which seem to have served only to batter the edges, while others appear to have removed a series of flakes extending along the shaft from the head to near the point. The smaller end of the object is worthy of especial notice; the point, which probably was originally sharply pyramidal, has been removed by an oblique fracture, leaving a clean, unworn surface. A portion of the surface adjacent to the truncated point has not been shaped by flaking, but retains the original minutely granular weathered surface, indicating that the stone before flaking or remodeling was already pointed. The object was therefore not used after the breaking of the point, as the unworn fracture shows, and the presence of the unaltered original surface adjacent to the present point would seem to prove that it never was subjected to use. The material appears to be a fine-grained, light-colored limestone, having a conchoidal fracture. It is soft and brittle, and is not likely to have been employed in making tools, and especially pick-like tools. This observation leads to an inquiry as to whether it is possible that the flaking could have been the result of natural agencies, such, for instance, as the crushing and abrading forces exerted by moving ice. Could a pointed bit or mass of brittle limestone have been so squeezed between moving impinging rocks as to remove these flakes and to produce the battered and rounded effect seen upon the edges and head, respectively, of this object without affecting the point, save to break it, and without breaking the shaft elsewhere? That natural forces do occasionally produce forms resembling those of art is well known, and that archæologists have at times been rash in accepting such as artificial cannot be denied.

To more fully inform myself upon this topic I made careful examinations of the contents of the moraine from which por-