fragments of flint.[34] Deposits of a like character, but varying both in the number and diversity of their contents, and, in general, showing no traces of use, have been discovered in other states to the east of the Mississippi. In the _Smithsonian Report_ for 1877, Mr Rau prints a curious account of “The Stock in Trade of an Aboriginal Lapidary.” In the spring of the previous year Mr. Keenan presented to the National Museum at Washington a collection of jasper ornaments, mostly unfinished, which had been found in Lawrence County, Mississippi. They were brought to light in ploughing a cotton field, where a deposit was exposed, lying about two and a half feet below the natural surface. It included four hundred and sixty-nine objects, of which twenty-two were unwrought jasper pebbles; one hundred and one were beads of an elongated cylindrical shape, and a few of them partially perforated. Others were ornaments of various forms, including two animal-shaped objects. The whole were made of jasper of a red or reddish colour, occasionally variegated with spots or streaks of pale yellow, but nearly all were in an unfinished state, and so fully bore out the idea of their being the stock in trade of some old native workman, who finished them in sufficient numbers to meet the demands of his customers.[35] From time to time fresh disclosures prove the extent to which such systematic industry was carried on. The various collections thus brought to light were unquestionably the result of prolonged labour, and were, for the most part, undoubtedly stored for purposes of trade. In some cases they may have been accumulated in the arsenal of the tribe in readiness for war. But whether we recognise in such discoveries the store of the trader, or the military arsenal, they indicate ideas of provident foresight altogether distinct from the desultory labours of the Indian savage in the preparation of his own indispensable supply of implements for the chase or for war.