Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/110

88 The original of Fig. 31 is curious in another aspect, it having been shaped, with the exception of the edge, entirely by nature, and not by art. The tendency of certain kinds of flint to split up into more or less regular prisms by assuming a sort of columnar structure, much like that which is exhibited by starch in drying, is well known. The maker of this implement has judiciously selected one of these prisms, which required no more than a moderate amount of grinding at one end to convert it into a neat and useful tool. It was found at Culford, in Suffolk, and formerly belonged to Mr. Warren, of Ixworth, but is now in my own collection.

The celt represented in Fig. 32 is also mine, and was found in the same neighbourhood, near Mildenhall. It is pointed and entirely unpolished at the butt-end, which, had that part only been preserved, would have had all the appearance of being the point of an implement of the Palæolithic period. It is, however, ground to a thin circular edge at the broad end. Another, nearly similar, from Burwell Fen, is in the Museum of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. I have another, rather straighter at the edge, but even more sharply pointed at the butt, from Reach Fen, and several others from the Eastern Counties. One of the three celts found in the Upton Lovel Barrow was of much the same shape, only larger and more rudely shipped. It had also apparently more of its surface polished. General Pitt Rivers has a large Indian celt of this character, but broader in its