Cushing thought that many of these slate and granite gorgets were bases on which bird-stones and similar effigies were mounted. Formerly I was inclined to accept Cushing’s views, but as careful study of the soft slate surfaces fails to reveal scratches, I am not now prepared to accept his suggestion. Rather let it be said that, if one is to theorize at all, the more complicated of these gorgets belong to the shamanistic individuals who were numerous in primitive tribes; that these, adorned with a variety of feathers and gewgaws, were brought before the lodge or into the central dance-ground and placed before the shaman, or that they were carried by him, or worn upon his person. [Illustration: FIG. 365. (S. 1–2.) Bar-amulets; Phillips Academy collection, Andover. These range from base with slightly turned ends to long straight objects pointed at either end. They are of black slate, perforated in the bottom like a bird-stone. ] The fact that so few of these are found in burial-places leads me to believe that the problematical class was made and used largely in times previous to the interment of bodies in mounds, graves, or cliff-houses. That is, they were all very old and did not belong to mound-building tribes or to those who were buried in graves. Of course, some of them did, but I am speaking of the average, for a small per cent of them were found in burial-places. Professor Edward H. Williams, Jr., of Woodstock, Vermont, examined with great care for me the surfaces of a number of these problematical forms, testing them from a point of view of chemistry and mineralogy, to ascertain what elements in the stones weathered out and what elements remained. In the Conclusions, Volume II, I present his observations, referring to them by our museum numbers, instead of by the figure numbers used in “The Stone Age.” His observations are of great importance in indicating that many of these stones are old. How old, I do not attempt to say in years, but that the most of them were made and used long before the Christian era, I firmly believe. [Illustration: FIG. 366. (S. 1–3.) Bar-amulet and four ridged objects, somewhat different from bar-amulets, but of such forms as could be ranged in a series, beginning with bar-amulet and ending in a ridged type, or _vice versa_. ]