terized by magnifying ten diameters as used in the compound microscope, or should it be compared to a simple lens of actually measured focus or foci? Should the objective be named by its equivalent focal length, or by its amplifying power, or both? Should our standard distance of measurement be changed from ten inches (254 millimetres) to nine and five-sixths inches (250 millimetres)? From what point in the objective shall the distance to the scale be measured? At what point of screw-collar adjustment shall the objective be placed for rating its angular aperture and amplifying power? Should the name ocular be substituted for "eye-piece" in general use?

THE STONE AGE IN NEW JERSEY.

BY CHARLES C. ABBOTT, M.D.

Fig. 9.

1-2 natural size.

THERE are many people still living who remember the Indians in New Jersey, the last remnant of the once mighty tribe, the Lenni Lenape; and to-day scattered all over the state, from the mountains of Sussex to the sea-beach of Cape May, are to be found stone weapons and implements, popularly considered as once the property of these aborigines, and by them fashioned in all the varied shapes, sizes and of the various minerals that we now find. Axes, arrow-heads, lance-heads, javelins, harpoons, spears, knives, scrapers, hammers, adzes, mortars and pestles, pipes, amulets and puzzling shapes of chipped jasper; all these, in varying numbers are

yearly turned up by the plough, gathered as "curiosities," or momentarily gazed upon and thrown aside to turn up again, more broken than before, and so more a puzzle to him who finds them. Again, at odd times, a "deposit" is met with, deep in the soil and a neighborhood may have the even tenor of its way disturbed by the wise comments of village sages, who ponder gravely over the "injine things" and never think to preserve them. A record of a number of these "finds," however, has put us in possession

of this fact, that the banks of our rivers and larger creeks were the favorite localities of these people of the stone age,- these Indians, if you choose a people who had at no time a knowledge of metals, unless perhaps they utilized the many masses of native copper, which even a century ago were still to be found in some localities (neighborhood of New Brunswick, Middlesex and Somerset counties). There are yet savages in their stone age; and it was not many centuries ago that a people along the Delaware River fashioned from its sandstone and porphyry peb

bles the weapons and implements their primitive wants suggested. These "relics" are now (with exceptions to be mentioned hereaf ter) surface-found specimens; but when a hundred or more are gathered together and carefully compared, we must come to one of two conclusions; either that there were many execrable workmen among their tool makers; or that the age of the crude spec

Fig. 12.

1-2 natural size.

imens far exceeds that of the finely wrought relics. Compare the rude implement (Fig. 9) and the finely polished axe (Fig. 15). Both of these were found on the surface, yet we can scarcely imagine that a people who could fashion the latter, would deign to utilize the former. Take a series of whatever class of relics you may, there is always a gradation from poor (primitive) to good (elaborate), which is an indication, we believe, of a lapse of years from very ancient to more modern times, from a palæolithic to a neolithic age; and long after the introduction of metals, the choicer stone weapons were probably retained, and new ones continually manufac

tured. Arrow heads of stone, we know, are still in use. If this surmise be correct, if a people as rude as they who fashioned the wrought flints found at St. Acheul, near Amiens, France,* once dwelt on the shores of the Delaware, and the relics are as rude as those mentioned above, were not such a people too primitive to wander from another continent? We believe this and consider the first inhabitants along our Atlantic coast and inland to have been autochthones, † and that their "flint chips" are now found

* Nilsson on the Stone Age. Edited by Sir J. Lubbock. Page xix, fig. 2. 3d Ed. 1868. † We judge of our "Indians" by those relics that are now the only trace of their former existence, and finding stone implements as rude as those of Abbeville and Hoxne (see Lubbock's Prehistoric times), we naturally conclude that the fashioners of such "flints" were so primitive as to be incapable of a migration from Asia, and

mingled with the more elaborate stoneware of their descendants; the so-called Indians of to-day.

Having made a collection of these stone implements and weap

Fig. 13.

ons, it was natural to attempt to classify them at once, and when we speak of things so dissimilar as axes and arrow heads, it seems strange that there should be any doubt at times, whether any particular specimen should belong to one class or the other; yet we have met with such specimens, and our cabinet. contains an unbroken series from the latter to the former, from triangular arrow heads, whose three sides scarce measure an inch, to jasper hatchets (?) a foot in length; and these hatchets run as gradually into axes, as the arrow points cease to be such, and are javelins, lance heads, harpoons or spears, as fancy dictates.

Natural size.

through a country so bleak as to offer no inducement to leave a more congenial climate. However, the Esquimaux seem to be contented where they are, but they are a very dif ferent people from the so-called "Indians." We cannot but think that there was an autochthonic people here in North America, and if an Asiatic people migrated hither, they drove away or absorbed the primitive race that utilized such rude implements, as one especially, that we have figured. We do not hesitate to state such to be our belief, notwithstanding we find Baron Bunsen saying, "The linguistic data before us [speaking of Schoolcraft's work on Indians], combined with the traditions and customs and. particularly, with the system of pictorial innemonic writing (first revealed in this work), enable me to say that the Asiatic origin of all these tribes is as fully proved as the unity of family among themselves." Sir John Lubbock says (Origin of Civilization; Amer. ed., p. 345), "It is my belief that the great continents were already occupied by a wide spread, though sparse, population, when man was no more advanced than the lowest savages of to-day, and although I am far from believing that the various degrees of civilization which now occur can be altogether accounted for by the external circumstances as they at present exist, still these circumstances seem to me to throw much light on the very different amount of progress which has been attained by different races." That is the migration from Asia that Bunsen claimed has absorbed the preexisting race, but has not obliterated all traces of such autochthonic people,we say autochthonic, but if all mankind sprung from some catarrhine ape of the Old World, a migration to America must have occurred; but this is going so far back into the past, that the relative positions of continent and ocean may have been widely different from what now exists, or existed when Bunsen would date the Turanian migration from Asia.

The large jasper implement or weapon, fig. 22, may have been a hatchet, lance head or skin dresser, for that matter, and the works and figures of ethnologists do not help us much in deciding. It would be a great gain to the subject, had each of these various forms of "flint implements" a representative in the tools and weapons of

Fig. 14.

some savage race now living. Such not being the case, however, conjecture must go a great way in deciding upon their use, and so suggest names by which they shall be known. With these prefatory remarks, we will now undertake a classification of the collection, upon which the remarks in this article are based; commencing with the large grooved and polished stones, popularly known as

AXES. For convenience of

description, we

will separate our "axes" into two classes, axes proper and hatchets; the former being a water-worn stone that is provided with an edge and blunt back; grooved or not grooved. for a handle; and the latter being cutting implements of one or more edges: without any hammer-like part, having been always broken from a mass of flinty rock and chipped into the desired shape.

We will now again divide the axes proper into grooved and