Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/450

428 Fig. 356. One (3 inches) was found in Mull, two (3 and 3 inches) came from Fyvie and Ballogie, Aberdeenshire, and one (2 inches) from Glenluce. Another (3 inches) in the Museum at Edinburgh came from the North of Ireland.

A few specimens of the same character as Figs. 353 and 356 have been found in Ireland. In that Country, also, the same slaty material was used, sometimes green, and sometimes red in colour.

The curious plate of fine soft sandstone, 4 inches long and perforated at each end, found in the Genista Cave, at Gibraltar, may possibly belong to this class, but it is by no means certain. Some objects of the same kind, with a hole at each end, have been found in the Côtes du Nord, France. Some early Spanish whetstones have one and even two perforations at each end.

The material of which this class of objects is formed is not exclusively stone. A plate of bone, now in the Devizes Museum, about 3 inches by inch, bored through at each end from the sides and back, so as not to interfere with the face, was found with a small bronze celt mounted as a chisel in stag's horn, and with bone pins and two whetstones, in a barrow near Everley. A fragment of another bracer made of bone was found at Scratchbury Camp, Wilts. It is doubtful whether the richly-ornamented flat plate of gold, with a hole at each corner, found with a bronze dagger in a barrow at Upton Level, was destined for the same purpose. It led Sir R. C. Hoare, however, to regard the slate plate from the barrow near Sutton as a mere ornament, "an humble imitation of the golden plate found at Upton Level." Others have regarded these stone plates as amulets or charms; as destined to be affixed to the middle of a bow; or as personal decorations. Wilson has called attention to their similarity to the perforated plates of stone, of which such numerous varieties are found in North America. The holes in these, however, are very rarely more than two in number, and sometimes only one, and these almost always near the middle of the stone; their purpose possibly being to serve as draw-holes for equalizing the size of cords, in the same manner as twine is