— 536 Aboriginal Stone-Drilling. [Juty> 25. The structure of the Eye of Trilobites. Am. Nat., xiv, pp. 5°3-5°8 Smith, Sidney Irving— 26. Occurrence of Cheh submarine structures on the c oast of the Unit ed States. Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., II, pp. 232-235 (1880). 27. On some points in the structiire of a species 1 icesia group of Crustacea." Ann. V, v, p. 269 (1 880). 28. Crustacea of Mexic and CeiUral America. Am. Jour. Sci. , III, XIX, pp. ilne-Edwards' Etude les Xiphosure; taces de la region '. ] [Review of Kingsli y] On a ir-inia, N'< rth« f Carolina and Flor Palsemonidse [supra 5 "|. Anr1. Jour. Sci., Ill 424 (1880). 30. [Notice of Huxley':3] The Cnlyfish; an intro*ductio'n to the study of Zool- ogy. Am. Journ., Ill, XIX, p. 424 (1880). Notes on Crustacea collected by Dr. G. M. Dawson at Vancouver and the Queen Charlotte islands. Report of progress of the Geol. Survey of Canada, 1878-79, pp. 206 B-218 B (1880). on their early stages. Trans. Conn. Acad., IV, pp. 247-253 (1880). Occasional occurrence of and species of Decapod Crus-tropical subtropical tacea on the coast of New England. Trans. Conn. Acad., IV, pp. 254-257 ABORIGINAL STONE-DRILLING. BY CHARLES RAU. ABOUT twelve years ago, I published an account of my experi- ments in drilling in stone without the aid of metallic tools, and, though during the interval my was constantly fixedattention upon archaeological matters, I had, on the whole, no occasion for changing the opinions then expressed. In the meantime, however, similar experiments, made by Euro- u" pean archaeologists, were commented on by Mr. John Evans, rwh<>. after a due consideration of the subject of stone-drilling, gives following summary of methods: "On the whole, we may mconclude that the holes were bored inous manners, of which the principal were 1. By chiseling, or picking with a sharp stone. 2. By grinding with a solid grinder, probably of wood. » Drilling in Stone without Metal ; Smithsonian Report for 1868, p. 392-4°°- 7 1 88 1 Aboriginal Stone-Drilling. .] 5 3 3. By grinding with a tubular grinder, probably of ox-horn. 4. By drilling with a stone drill. 5. By drilling with a metallic drill. " Holes produced by any of these means could, of course, receive their final polish by grinding."1 It appears doubtful to me whether in North America (north of Mexico) metallic tools for drilling stone were used, considering that the only metal which could have been employed for such purposes was hammered native copper—a substance too soft to be applied to any kind of hard stone without the aid of a very efficient triturated grinding material. Nor do I believe that the former in- habitants had sufficient skill in working copper to fashion it into a tubular tool suitable for stone-drilling and to my knowledge no; such object has ever been discovered in the United States. Soft stone, moreover, could be bored with greater facility by means of properly-shaped flint implements, as will be exemplified in this article. Even bronze, I think, would be found less serviceable than flint for drilling stone of 2inferior hardness. Dr. Ferdinand Keller, of Zurich, the meritorious investigator of Swiss lake-habitations, has made quite interesting experiments in drilling stone and other substances employed by the lake- dwellers. He operated on stone with tubular bones of goats and sheep, and with hollow cylinders of stag-horn and yew-wood, these drills being inserted into spindles slightly pressed at the upper end, and set in motion by means of a bow. This apparatus corresponded in general principle to that figured by me on page 399 of the Smithsonian Report for 1868. Water and quartz sand, of course, were necessary agents in the operation. Dr. Keller expresses himself quite satisfied with his success; for there appeared the round, smooth hole, with the characteristic parallel strias and the core at its bottom, which is always seen in unfinished antique specimens drilled with a hollow tool. The work, however, progressed very slowly, and the operator adds to this statement the observation that no prepared hollow bone, which might have served as a drill, has thus far been discovered in the lacustrine deposits of Switzerland. After these experiments it occurred to him to employ a hollow cylinder made of ox-horn, 1 Evans : The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Bri- tarn; London, 1872, p. 48. n the United States National Mu: 53^ Aboriginal Stone-Drilling. [July, and he obtained now more favorable results, owing to the yield- ing substance of the horn, in which the sand became imbedded and acted like a file. " The objection," he says, " that no drills made of this material have been discovered, is rendered invalid by the nature of the horns of bovines, which are totally dissolved in water in a comparatively short time." 1 Methods like those employed by Dr. Keller, may have been practiced by the aborigines of this country; yet among the hundreds of bone and horn implements which have passed through my hands during my connection with the United States National Museum, not one exhibited the character of a hollow drill, and I am not aware that any of the collections of this country contains such a tool. But I must not omit to state what I learned in 1875 from a Warm Spring Indian belonging to a delegation which had come to Washington for the purpose of transacting business with the Government. These Indians were well supplied with pipes, mostly made of alabaster, and shaped like the ordinary catlinite pipes. With some difficulty I obtained from one of them the in- formation that they drill the cavities of their pipes with bone tools, and, in order to strengthen his assertion, he led me to a case in the Museum in which objects of bone were exhibited. The cavities of their pipes, some of which were purchased from them, appear to have been produced by solid rather than hollow drills. According to Catlin, the pipes made of the material now named after him, are (or were) drilled by means of a wooden stick, in conjunction with sand and water. In my account of drilling, referred to in the beginning of tins article, I should have stated with greater emphasis that, in illus- trating the possibility of perforating very hard stone by employ- ing a revolving stick and sand and water, I was far from under- rating the efficiency of a flint tool for drilling stone of less obdu- rate character. In operating with a well-pointed flint arrow-head, firmly set in the cleft end of a short stick, on a fragment of a pierced tablet of tolerably hard slate, I produced anin about half hour a small perforation in no way distinguishable from one made by an aboriginal worker in stone. The perforations in these tab- lets are either conical or bi-conical. By from both sidesdrilling of the fragment I made one of bi-conical form; if I had continued 1 Keller : Durchbohrung der GeratheSteinbeile, Hirschbornwerkzeuge und anderer aus den Pfahlbauten, in: Anzeiger fur Schweizeriscbe Akerthumskunde Zurich, ; Juni, 1870, S. 139-144. 1 8 8 1 .] Aboriginal Stone-Drilling. 5 39 to drill from one side only, the bore would have assumed a coni- cal shape. I simply turned the improvised tool with the hand like a gimlet, exerting a moderate pressure, and wetting the cav- ity from time to time with water. During the operation very diminutive particles of the drilling tool came off with a slight crack, and the flint showed afterward scarcely any wear. This fact is worth noting, as it accounts for the fresh appearance of many flint tools which undoubtedly have served for drilling purposes. Any one who has handled a large number of North American flint implements must be aware that there are some which approach in outline more or less the arrow-head shape, but exhibit a rounded edge instead of a point. They might often be taken for cutters; yet many of them, I am now inclined to believe, served as tools for boring stone of inferior hardness, the curved extremity forming, of course, the penetrating part of the drill. My view is based upon the fact that an implement of this kind actually has been found in the unfinished bore of an aboriginal stone object, now in possession of Mr. James Wood, of Mount Kisco, West- chester County, New York. Last year that gentleman, who is President of the Westchester County Historical Society, was kind enough to send the partly-drilled specimen, together with the drill, for examination to the Smithsonian Institution, where I caused drawings of both to be made. The objects were found at Croton Point, on the Hudson, in Westchester County, by Mr. Wood's cousin, a lad about thirteen years of age, whose veracity cannot be doubted, and who is not at all given to collecting abo- riginal relics, of which, indeed, he has no knowledge. The genu- ineness of the discovery is beyond any suspicion. Figure I shows the character of the drilled object, which is a rather rude exemplification of a type not unfrequent in the United States, and represented by a number of specimens in the archaeo- logical collection of the National Museum, where I have classed them for the present with the drilled ceremonial weapons, some- times very 1inappropriately called " banner-stones." The specimen in question consists of chloritic potstone, a very soft material, which could easily be fashioned and drilled. The scribed in « Proceedings the \ lvancement of Sci-of the American As'! , , { „i f .r ence " (Twenty-eighth meeting, August, etc.1879); Salem, 1880, p. 526, 540