Some of the so-called corn-crushers[1] and mealing-stones from the Swiss Lake-dwellings have shallow depressions on the faces, but for the most part they belong to the class to be subsequently described. I have one of granite, from Nussdorf, with a depression on one face, in which the thumb can be placed, while the forefinger lies in a groove, like that of a pulley, which extends about half-way round the stone. The opposite part of the edge is much worn by hammering. It approximates in form to the pulley-like stones to which the name of sling-stones has been given, but the use of which is at present a mystery.
A hammer-stone, curiously like that which I have engraved as Fig. 165, is among those found in the settlements of the Lac du Bourget,[2] by M. Rabut. This or a similar one is in the British Museum. Another from Picardy[3] has been figured.
Fig. 166.—Scamridge. 12
A hammer-stone, if so it may be called, of bronze, is among the antiquities from Greenland in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen.
Occasionally the depression is reduced to a minimum, and consists of merely a slight notch or roughening on one or both faces of the pebble which has served as a hammer or pounding-stone.
The irregular, flat greenstone pebble, worn away at both ends, shown in Fig. 166, has on one face only a notch, apparently intended to receive the thumb. It was found at Scamridge, Yorkshire, and is in the Greenwell Collection. It will be observed that it is worn into a curved ridge at one end. In the same collection is an oval quartzite pebble (412 inches), battered at both ends, and with a slight diagonal ridge at that most worn away. This was found in a barrow at Weaverthorpe,[4] with an unburnt body. I have a flat greenstone pebble from
