The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1888-11-10
STONE IMPLEMENTS.
Many of Them Still Used in Virginia and
Other Southern states.

Other Southern states.
All over our country we find many
interesting relics of the Indians. Stone
spearheads, arrowheads, hammers,
chisels, knives, scrapers, etc, together
with pottery, some of burned or baked
clay, some cut from soft stone, as slate,
steatite. etc. Similar remnants of the
so-called stone age of mankind are
found in nearly every portion of the
globe, and, besides their interest as
curious survivals of by-gOne time,
they aid US toward discovery of tho
prehistoric man. II is hardly of less
interest, or of less historic or scientific
value, to note how the stone age still
survives among us to no little extent.
Here in Virginia, for instance, many
people still scald their slaughtered
hogs in hogsheads or barrels, as our
barbarian progenitors boiled their meat
in skins, by heating stones and putting
them into the water until it is hot
enough for the purpose. The stones or
dinarily used in this way are roundish,
hard and very heavy black or brown
modules, sometimes called NEGRO
heads" or iron stones, although they
are compressed lava upheaved in strata
through crevices in the rock crust OF
the earth at remote periods of geolog-
ical time.
We sometimes encounter stones that
are followed out in the center, often
to a socket, and these not infrequently
are treasured by their finders as an an
cient Indian stone for MASKING or
grinding corn, with the aid of a stone
pestle; yet they are nothing more or
less, for the most part, than discarded
stones once used by our rural brethren
for their gates to swing upon-many
gates in all parts of the Common
wealth being still thus pivoted.
Many a housewife in remote country
regions still has her stone weights,
more or less rough, but honest.
Wherever the old Kentucky rifle lin
gers there is likely to be found still d
set of soapstone bullet moulds; our log
cabins yet have rough stone and clay
chimneys, where they are not of mud
and sticks; in many humble house,
hold, a thin rock not always smooth,
| is the utensil for baking corn
bread, and the stone ''mash trap is
familiar to all our country boys.
The stone pipe, believed by many
to have gone out with the Indian,
is made and used to-day by many col
ored folks and by no few white folks.
/ Whenever soapstone, or steatite, is
found not only the stone pipe. but
many other articles supposed to be
archaic, are still manufactured, and
put to service by the ingenious and
thrifty. In such localities stone pans.
stone troughs for children, etc, are
still common. Some day they will be
dug up and attributed to the Indians,
or even to their predecessors. A little
inquiry and investigation would show
much more of the stone age still here
than we have reverted to.
1t is not rare to see stone sinkers in
use for lines and nets in fishing; the
flint is not yet superseded wholly by
the match; there are clocks in the land
yet run by stone weights; stone novels,
with dirt roofs, are not unknown in our
mountains; the colored ruf1ian. and
sometimes the white one, carries q
stone in a stocking, along with his
razor, when on the warpath; many a
cider press and tobacco press are still
made effective by stones swung at the
end of their lever; and our small boys
are all in their stone age whenever
they can give their natures full and
free play.
We are not so far off from the stone
age man as some imagine; many Of the
implements and relics supposed to be
prehistoric, and doubtless so in many
cases, have their modern duplicates,
and in some instances are all in use
among us. Professor and Dr. James c..
Southall, Of Virginia, has written a
big book to prove the recent origin of
man, and DR.. Arthur Mitchell, Of Scot
land, has published a very interesting
work to illustrate how the past and
present are Identical in many things;
and so we may conclude that as there
is nothing new under the sun, so there
is nothing very old beneath that lumin-
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