Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/247

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MADE FROM PEBBLES WITH NATURAL HOLES.
225

the neighbourhood of Flamborough, Yorkshire. The hole in this is more bell-mouthed than in the other specimen, and a little nearer the centre of the stone.

One of nearly similar form, but rather flatter on one face, 31/4 inches long, found in Newport, Lincoln, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[1]

Another in size and shape, much like Fig. 152, was dug up at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Mochnant, Montgomeryshire.[2] Another in the British Museum came from the neighbourhood of Keswick.

An egg-shaped hammer, 3 inches long, of mica schist, and found in the Isle of Arran,[3] is in the National Museum at Edinburgh. The shaft-hole is in the centre.

Fig. 152.—Birdoswald. 1/2

Sometimes these hammer-heads are, in outline, of an intermediate form between Figs. 151 and 152, being oval in section, and more rounded at the smaller end than the larger, which is somewhat flattened. One such, in the Christy Collection, is formed of granite, and was found at Burns, near Keswick, Cumberland. Another, of quartzite, 31/4 inches long, found on Breadsale Moor, is in the Museum at Derby. Neither of them presents the same high degree of finish as Fig. 151. They seem, indeed, to have been made from pebbles, which were but slightly modified in form by their conversion into hammer-heads.

Occasionally, though rarely, flint pebbles naturally perforated have been used as hammers. In excavating a barrow at Thorverton,[4] near Exeter, the Rev. R. Kirwan discovered a flint pebble about 33/4 inches long, with a natural perforation rather nearer one end than the other, but which on each face has been artificially enlarged. Each end of the pebble is considerably abraded by use. No other relics, with the
  1. Vol. xxvii. p. 142.
  2. Montg. Coll., vol. xiv p. 275.
  3. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. v. p. 240.
  4. Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol. iii. p. 497.