ments of this class have been found in Poitou and in other parts of France. They are also met with in Belgium and Denmark.
As has already been suggested, it is by no means improbable that some of these ruder unpolished implements were employed in agriculture, like the so-called shovels and hoes of flint of North America, described by Professor Rau. I have a flat celt-like implement about 61/2 inches long and 3 inches broad, found in Cayuga County, New York, which, though unground, has its broad end beautifully polished on both faces, apparently by friction of the silty soil in which it has been used as a hoe. It is, as Professor Rau has pointed out in other cases, slightly striated in the direction in which the implement penetrated the ground.[1] I have also an Egyptian chipped flint hoe from Qûrnah, polished in a precisely similar manner. It is doubtful whether many of the rough implements from the neighbourhood of Thebes are Neolithic or Palæolithic.[2]
Fig. 16.—Near Newhaven. 1/2
The implement represented in Fig. 16, rude as it is, is more symmetrical and more carefully chipped than many of this class. I found it, with several other worked flints, on the surface of the soil in a field between Newhaven and Telscombe, Sussex, where had formerly stood a barrow, one of a group of four, the positions of which are shown on the Ordnance Map, though they are now all levelled to the ground. It is, of course, possible that such an implement may have been merely blocked out, with the intention of finishing it by subsequent chipping and grinding, and that it was not intended for use in its present condition; or it may possibly have been deposited in the tumulus as a votive offering, or in compliance with some ancient custom, as suggested hereafter. (See p. 282.) It will be observed that the original crust of the block of flint from which it was fashioned is left at the butt end. A somewhat similar specimen, from the neighbourhood of Hastings, and another from a tumulus at Seaford are figured in the
Sussex Archæological Collections[3]; and I have one from the Thames at Battersea, and others from Suffolk and from the Cambridge Fens. The late Sir Joseph Prestwich, F.R.S., found one of the same character at Shoreham, near Sevenoaks, and the late Mr. J. F. Lucas had
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