Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/193

Rh the blades, which are formed with lugs like those of Guiana, is covered with a thick coating formed of bees-wax and mastic.

Besides those that were hafted as axes or adzes, it seems probable that not a few of the implements known as celts may have been for use in the hand as cutting tools, either mounted in short handles or unmounted. There can be but little doubt that the tools, Fig. 83 and 83, were thus used in the hand, as also the implement with a depression on each face (Fig. 87), and that with the notches at the side (Fig. 89); and they can hardly have been unique of their kind.

Dr. Lukis, indeed, at one time expressed an opinion that the stone celt was not intended to be secured "in a handle, but was held in the hand and applied to particular uses which are not now evident, but to which neither the hammer nor the hatchet were applicable." But in the face of the fact that numerous handles have since been found, such an opinion is no longer tenable except in a very limited sense.

Among modern savages we have instances of similar tools being used in the hand without the intervention of any haft, giving a form much like that of Fig. 83, though among the Australians the butt-end is sometimes enveloped in a mass of resinous matter, so as to form a knob which fits the hand. According to Prinz Neuwied, the Botocudos used their stone blades both unmounted in the hand and hafted as hatchets. The South Australians and Tasmanians likewise use celts in a similar manner.

There are cases in which the hatchet and haft have been formed from one piece of stone. Such a one, of chloritic stone, found in a mound in Tennessee, is in outline like Fig. 92, and has a small loop for suspension at the end of the handle. Mr. Cursiter, of Kirkwall, has an instrument of the same kind from Orkney, formed of hard slate. In extreme length it measures 9 inches. It cannot, however, be assigned to a very early date. For a comparison of celts from different countries Westropp's "Prehistoric Phases" may be consulted.

With regard to the uses to which these instruments were applied, they must have been still more varied than the methods of mounting, which, as we have seen, adapted them for the purposes of hatchets and adzes; while, mounted in other ways, or