Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/292

270 some cases provided with an iron loop for suspension. They are usually of sandstone, and not formed from slaty rocks.

A whetstone, 5 inches long, the two flat faces of which had evidently been used for sharpening flat blades, while in the centre of each is a deep groove, probably caused by sharpening pointed tools, such as awls or needles of bronze, was found at Ty Mawr, Anglesea, near a spot where a number of bronze celts, spear-heads, &c., had previously been dug up. It has been figured by the late Hon. W. O. Stanley, whose cut is here reproduced as Fig. 187. The ends of the stone are somewhat battered from its having been also used as a hammer.

Fig. 187.—Ty Mawr.

The same explorer discovered in hut-circles in Holyhead Island other whetstones of the same character, in one instance with two principal grooves and minor scorings crossing each other at an acute angle, and in another with three parallel grooves in the face of the stone. There can be little doubt that these sharpening stones belong to a period when the use of metal for cutting and piercing instruments was fully established.

There are frequently found in Ireland and Scotland flat pebbles of quartz and quartzite, sometimes ground on the edges or faces, or on both, and having on each face an indentation running in a somewhat oblique direction to the longer axis of the pebble. Specimens have been figured by Sir William Wilde, who describes them as sling-stones. The flat faces of some have all the appearance of having been abraded by a pointed instrument. I have never met with this form in England, but in the National Museum at Edinburgh is a grooved pebble exactly like those found in Ireland, from the broch, at Kintradwell, Sutherlandshire, and another from that at Lingrow, Orkney. One from Borness,