“What I have thus far written is at second hand, being merely recollections of conversations at various times with the parties I have referred to, and more recently with a man who for over thirty years had been connected with a fur company, and who had lived most of that time among the Indians, and much of it, as a trapper. “What I now propose is to give some of my experimental practice in flaking and working flint (chert), and (from a purely mechanical standpoint) some conclusions drawn from a pretty extensive examination of the waste and refuse as well as finished and partly finished work left in the aboriginal flint workshops. [Illustration: FIG. 45. (S. about 1–2.) Turtlebacks almost ready for the flaking process. Collection of E. T. Wing, South Portland, Maine. ] “There are many places along the banks of the Ohio River and its tributaries that are not subject to the annual overflow, but are still below the occasional great floods, where the flaking process has been extensively carried on, and where cores and waste chips are abundant. At one of these places, on the Kentucky side of the river, I found a number of chert blocks, as when first brought from the quarry, from which no regular flakes had been split; some had a single corner broken off as a starting-point. On the sharp, right-angled edge of several, I found the indentations left by small flakes, having been knocked off evidently by blows, as described by Catlin, as a preparation for seating the flaking-tool. Most of the localities referred to are now under cultivation, but before being cleared of timber and subjected to the plow, no surface relics were found; but on the caving and wearing away of the riverbanks, as the light earth washed away, many spear- and arrow-heads and other stone relics were left on shore. After the land had been cleared and the plow had loosened the soil, one of the great floods that occur at intervals of some fifteen or twenty years would wash away the loose soil, leaving the great flint workshops exposed. It is from the stores of material left, the cores or nuclei thrown aside, caches of finished and unfinished implements and flakes, the tools and wastage, vast accumulations of splints, etc., that we can, on critical examination, draw tolerably correct ideas of the mode of working pursued. [Illustration: FIG. 46. (S. 4–5.) Knife made from a large flake from a long block of flint. Material: yellow chert. Dr. A. G. Clyne, Paragould, Arkansas. ] * * * * *