“Here also are found massive flakes or chips of fine-grained quartzite, that teach another lesson to a seeking practical mechanic, nosing about among the accumulated refuse. These flakes are often rough on one face, showing them to be an outside scale from the stone; occasionally, fragments of large flat implements that have been classed as agricultural (hoes or spades). These fragments have not been broken by want of skill in the workman, but from undiscovered seams in the stone that did not show until the outer surface was thrown off. None of these fragments shows any sign of use; in fact, some of them have not been wrought to an edge. I have several specimens of hoes from the same ridge beyond the settlement where it would naturally be cultivated, that from their highly polished working ends show long use. The lesson is that they are not made from great flakes, but rather represent the core from which flakes have been thrown off. Finished hoes and spades frequently have portions of natural stone partings that have not been worked off, and show them to have been worked from thin slabs. These slabs are a metamorphic thin bedded sandstone, belonging to what our state geologist, Professor A. H. Worthen, calls the Chester group. They occur near the Saline, about eight miles above the flaking-ground, in an upheaval that has brought them to the surface with the upturned edges of the carboniferous limestone through which the salt springs flow. This is probably the source whence this quartzite was obtained, as slabs from one inch to two inches thick are found there; but there are many other locations stretching across Southern Illinois to the Mississippi River where they also occur. [Illustration: FIG. 50. (S. 1–2.) War or triangular points; straight and concave bases. Material: quartz, chert, obsidian, argillite, jasper, and porphyry. Phillips Academy collection. (See page 86.) ]