Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/66

44, many show evident traces of having been partially fashioned by means of sawing. I have also remarked it on a specimen from Portugal, and on many fibrolite hatchets from Spain. Dr. Keller has noticed the process, and suggests that the incisions on the flat surface of the stone chosen for the purpose of being converted into a celt were made sometimes on one side, and sometimes on both, by means of a sharp saw-like tool. He bas since gone more deeply into the question, and bas suggested that the stone to be sawn was placed on the ground near a tree, and then sawn by means of a splinter of flint fixed in the end of a staff, which at its other end was forked, and as it were hinged under one of the boughs of the tree sufficiently flexible to give pressure to the flint when a weight was suspended from it. The staff was, be supposed, to have been grasped in the band, and moved backwards and forwards while water was applied to the flint to facilitate the sawing. The objection to this suggestion is, that in case of the flint being brought to the edge of the stone it would be liable to be driven into the ground by the weight on the bough, and thus constantly hinder the operation; nevertheless some such mechanical aids in sawing may have been in use.

M. Troyon considered that the blade of flint was used in connection with sand as well as water. This latter view appears, at first sight, far more probable, as the sawing instrument has in some instances cut nearly $3⁄4$ of an inch into the stone, which, it would seem, could hardly have been accomplished with a simple flint saw; and the sides of the saw-kerf or notch show, moreover, parallel striæ, as if resulting from the use of sand. The objection that at first occurred to my mind against regarding the sawing instrument as having been of flint was of a negative character only, and arose from my not having seen in any of the Swiss collections any flint flakes that had indisputably been used for sawing by means of sand. At one time I fancied, from the character of the bottom and sides of the notches, that a string stretched like that of a bow might have been used with sand in the manner in which, according to Oviedo, the American Indians sawed in two their iron fetters, and I succeeded in cutting off the