“In December, 1894, an employé of Mr. Links, while plowing in this field, turned up several implements. Their form and size being unusual, time was taken to dig, and the objects as shown in the accompanying illustration were found. According to the words of the finder, they were simply ‘in a bunch’; nothing unusual in the manner of the deposit was noted. The find was talked of and commented upon for several months. The precise spot having been carefully noted, further digging was done in the following March. At a depth of a foot or two below where the flint objects had been deposited, two images or idols were found. Whether the deposits had been associated with human remains, it was impossible to determine. From appearances and accounts of the discovery, the images were placed in the ground side by side, in an upright position, the flints in a compact ‘bunch’ immediately above. On all sides were remains of graves, but so many of these graves having been disturbed and the stones removed in cultivation, that with certainty it cannot be said that the find was a deposit with the dead, although the writer inclines to the opinion that they were and that the stone cist lay immediately above the cache of objects.” General Thruston says of such forms:— “The symmetry and beauty of the handle, the exact projections on opposite sides, the tapering forms and the evidently important place these rare objects must have held in the religious and social life of the old Tennesseeans, all invest them with peculiar interest. “Here we have, in all probability, the sceptres or royal maces once used by the magnates of the race that built the mounds and fortifications of middle Tennessee. They may have been the insignia of chieftainship or of the priesthood.” I feel confident in asserting that nowhere in the world has the equal of these magnificent flint implements been found. The maker of such forms was a Stone-Age artist of remarkable skill. Fig. 137 exhibits 39 remarkable chipped objects from Colonel B. H. Young’s collection, Louisville, Kentucky. There are, perhaps, more specialized flint artifacts found in Kentucky and Tennessee than elsewhere in North America. Some of these can be classified, but most of the 39 objects represent individual fancy. The master workman exerted himself to produce unusual types, and being a master at flint-flaking he rounded out his work skillfully and artistically. Readers are requested to examine Fig. 137 with some care. [Illustration: FIG. 161. (_S. about 1–3._) _Chipped problematical forms, from a grave in Tennessee. Missouri Historical Society collection._ (_See page 164._) ] _Figures 161 and 162 illustrate problematical forms in flint from a grave in Tennessee. See pages 164–166. Missouri Historical Society collection, St. Louis, Missouri._