symptoms of wear in several places. It was found in the fourth foot in depth, in the cave-earth; but the ground at the spot had been previously broken, so that its position cannot be regarded as certain.
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| Fig. 396.—Kent's Cavern. (2,183) 11 | Fig. 397.—Kent's Cavern. (1,822) 11 |
Another instrument of the same class (No. 1,822) is shown, full size, in Fig. 397. It has been formed from a ridged flake, and exhibits marks of having been in use as a scraping tool, not only at one end but at the sides. The inner face is beautifully smooth and flat. Some of these scraper-like tools are more square at the end, and chipped and worn along both sides, having evidently seen much service. So far as form is concerned, there is little or nothing to distinguish them from the analogous instruments of the Neolithic Period. Such scrapers also occur in most of the caves which have furnished implements in France and Belgium, and usually in much greater proportional abundance than has been the case in Kent's Cavern. In some caves, however, as for instance in that of Le Moustier, instruments of this character are extremely scarce. They appear to me to have served for other purposes besides that of dressing skins—one of the uses to which such instruments are applied by the Eskimos of the present day. There is great probability of some of them having been used for striking fire by means of pyrites, as the French and Belgian caves have yielded specimens of that mineral. In the Trou de Chaleux[1] a block of pyrites was found deeply scored at one end, as if by constant scraping blows with flint; and another block from Les Eyzies, with the end worn, is in the Christy Collection.
Several examples of another form of tool, manufactured from simple triangular or polygonal flakes, have occurred in Kent's Cavern. In- ↑ Dupont, "L'Homme pend. les Ages de la Pierre," p. 71.
