Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/538

516 on the surface of the soil, and that it was exceptionally short for a cave-specimen. A little time after the first edition of this book had appeared, I discovered that this scraper had been found on the surface near the top of Windmill Hill, and had been included with the other specimens by mistake. It is undoubtedly neolithic.

The other implements from the Brixham Cave consist for the most part of flakes and splinters of flint of different sizes, and more or less chipped. One of these, 2 inches long, has been chipped or jagged along one edge, apparently by use, while the broad round end is so much worn away as to almost assume the appearance of a "scraper." Most of them bear decided marks, either on their sides or ends, of having been in use as scraping tools. About half way along one of them is a rounded notch, apparently produced by scraping some cylindrical object; and in connection with this it may be mentioned that a portion of a cylindrical pin, or rod, of ivory was found in the cave, being the only object wrought from an animal substance. A cylindrical piece of ivory about inch in diameter was found in the Gorge d'Enfer cavern, and is in the Christy Collection. Some of the splinters of flint are very small, and yet one of them only inch by  inch shows the worn edge resulting from use. An irregular sub-angular flint pebble somewhat pear-shaped in form has some of its angles much battered, as if by hammering, and has probably served as a hammer-stone, simply held in the hand. Pebbles similarly bruised at the more salient parts have frequently been found in the French caves.

The Brixham Cave specimens are now in the British Museum, and the general result of the examination of them, is that they are found to present analogous, and in some cases almost identical, forms with those discovered in other caves, and in the ancient river-gravels, associated with the remains of animals now for the most part extinct; and that most of the implements prove not only to have been made by man, but to have been actually in use before becoming imbedded in the cave-loam; while from the whole of the flints discovered presenting these signs of human workmanship or use upon them, it is evident that their presence in the cave must in some measure be due to human agency, though it was probably by means of water that they were deposited in the positions in which they were found.

These caves, rock-shelters, or fissures are situated near