Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/327

Rh from a splinter of a hammer-stone—a portion of the surface being bruised all over.

In Fig. 215 is shown another duck-bill scraper, with parallel sides, found by myself on the Sussex Downs, near Berling Gap. It is a thick instrument, with both sides and end trimmed into form, the flake from which it is made having in all probability been originally much broader, and more circular. The bulb of percussion is not in the middle of the butt, but within three-eighths of an inch of the left side.

Fig. 215.—Sussex Downs.

Another form of these instruments is not unlike the flat valve of an oyster shell, being usually somewhat unsymmetrical either to the right or to the left. A specimen of this class from the Downs, near Berling Gap, is shown in Fig. 216. The end is neatly chipped to an almost elliptical sweep, but the sides in this instance are left untrimmed; the right side shown in the side view being flat and almost square with the face. In some instances the trimming of the sides extends all the way round to the butt.

Occasionally, though rarely, one of the sides, either right or left, is trimmed in such a manner that its more or less straight edge meets the curved edge of the end at an angle, so as to form an obtuse point. An example of this kind is shown in Fig. 217, from the Downs, near Berling Gap. This instrument is made from an external splinter of flint, the edge at the end and front of one side alone being carefully chipped into shape. It approaches in form to the grattoir-bec of French antiquaries.

In most scrapers the bulb of percussion of the flake from which they have been made is, as has already been said, at the opposite end to that which has been trimmed to form the curved edge; but this is by no means universally the case, for sometimes the bulb is at the side of the scraper, and sometimes, though more rarely, it has been at the end which has been worked to the scraper edge.

It seems needless to engrave examples of these varieties, which are