Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/366

344 There can be no doubt that all these triangular instruments, whether of flint or other material, were used as cutting tools; and the name of skinning-knife, which has been applied to them as well as to the quadrangular instruments, not improbably denotes one of the principal purposes for which they were made.

Fig. 260.—Harome, Yorkshire.

In the Greenwell Collection is another curious instrument, from the same locality as that last described, which is shown in Fig. 260. It is formed of a hard slaty stone, having one side ground to a regularly curved and sharp edge, and the others rounded by grinding. The two faces, which are equally convex, are also ground to such an extent that but little of the original chipped surface can be discerned. In the face shown in the figure there is a slight central depression, and on the other face two such at about 2 inches apart, and in a line parallel with the top or back of the instrument. When it is held in the right hand, with the fore-finger over the end, the thumb fits into the depression on the one face and the middle and fourth fingers into those on the other, so that it is firmly grasped. It is evident that this must have been a cutting or chopping tool; but the materials on which it was employed would seem to have been soft, as the edge is by no means sharp, and is also entirely uninjured by use. These depressions for the thumb and fingers resemble in character those on the handles of some of the Eskimo scrapers and knives already described.

Another implement, of nearly the same form, but rather longer and narrower, is in the same collection, and was found in Ryedale, Yorkshire. It is of hard clay-slate, 5 inches long at the blade and 2 inches wide, with a curved sharp edge, and a straight back rounded transversely. It is bevelled at one end, which is flat, apparently owing to a joint in the slate; and somewhat rounded at the other, where it fits the hand. Neither in this nor in a third instrument of the same class, also from Harome, are there any depressions on the face. This last has been formed from a flat kidney-shaped pebble of clay-slate, the hollow side and one end left almost in the natural condition so as to fit the hand, and the curved side ground to a sharp edge, which is returned round the end almost at a right angle. The edge at the end