Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/408

386 the other notch should not have been formed, so that the probability is that the arrow-head was lost just before completion. In the other case the arrow-head, after being skilfully chipped on both faces into a triangular form, has had one of the notches worked in its base; but in effecting this the tool has been brought so near the centre of the head as to leave insufficient material for the tang, and the barb has also been broken off. In this condition it appears to have been thrown away as a waster.

Whether these views be correct or not, one deduction seems allowable, viz., that the barbed flint arrow-heads were, as a rule, finished at their points, and approximately brought into shape at their base, before the notches were worked to form the central tang and develop the barbs.

A curious double-pointed arrow-head from Brompton, Yorkshire, is, by the kindness of the Society of Antiquaries, shown in Fig. 323. It had probably at first only a single point, and having been broken was trimmed into its present shape. Some of the "exceptional" forms from Brionio, in the Veronese, approximate to this, but with all respect to the Italian archæologists, I agree with Mr. Thomas Wilson, and cannot accept these forms as genuine.

I must now give a few examples of the stemmed and barbed flint arrow-heads found in Scotland, which, however, do not essentially differ in character from those of the more southern part of Britain. First among them I would place a remarkably fine specimen found in the Isle of Skye, which has already been published more than once. It is very acutely pointed, and expands at the base so as to give strength to the barbs, which are slightly curved inwards. From its size it may have served to point a javelin rather than an arrow.

The edges of some of the Scottish arrows are sometimes neatly serrated. An example of this kind is given in Fig. 325, from a specimen in the National Museum at Edinburgh. It is formed of chalcedonic flint, and was found with others of ordinary types at Urquhart, Elgin.

The original of Fig. 326 is in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and was found in Aberdeenshire. Its sides (like those of some in the National Museum at Edinburgh) are slightly ogival, so as to give sharpness to the point. Another from Urquhart, Elgin, has been figured, as well as one from Ballachulish, with straighter sides. One from Montblairy, Banff, is of the same type, as is one from Kilmarnock. The sides of Fig. 327 are curved outwards. This arrow-head was found in Glenlivet, Banff, a district where arrow-heads are common, and is in the Greenwell Collection, now the property of Dr. Allen Sturge, at Nice.