Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/368

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
346
TRIMMED FLAKES, KNIVES, ETC.
[CHAP. XV.

that district. Though smaller, and rather more deeply notched at the base than my Shetland knife, it is curiously like it in general form. The edge, however, only extends along one side, and is not carried round the point.

Fig. 262.—Walls, Shetland. 1/2

The specimens that I have engraved as Figs. 262 and 263, are in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London. They are formed of thin laminæ of what is said to be madreporite, and are sharp all round.[1] They were found with fourteen others at the depth of six feet in a peat-moss, the whole of them being arranged in a horizontal line, and overlapping each other like slates upon the roof of a house. There are several specimens formed of felspathic rocks, and from various localities in Shetland, preserved in the British Museum. A note attached to one of them states that twelve were found in Easterskild, in the parish of Sandsting. An engraving of one of them is given in the "Horaæ Ferales."[2] I possess several; one of porphyritic stone, oval, 8 inches long, is polished all over both faces, one side is sharp and the other rounded.

In the National Museum at Edinburgh[3] are other examples, also from Shetland. Several have been figured.[4] Some have a kind of haft.[5] They occasionally have a hole for suspension.[6] Sir Daniel Wilson[7] states that a considerable number of implements, mostly of the same class, were found under the clay in the ancient mosses of
  1. "Cat. Ant. Soc. Ant.," p. 14. "Cat. A. I. Mus. Ed.," p. 7.
  2. Pl. ii. 15.
  3. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. iii. p. 437; iv. p. 52.
  4. P. S. A. S., vol. xii. p. 271; xxix. p. 54.
  5. P. S. A. S., vol. xii. p. 270.
  6. Smith's "Preh. Man in Ayrshire, 1895, p. 45.
  7. "Preh. Ann.," vol. i. p. 184.