They are generally almost equally convex on the two sides, and in length vary from two to eight or nine inches, though for the most part only about four or five inches long. The implements of this form appear to be most abundant in the neighbourhood of Abbeville, where that engraved was found; while those of the spear-shape prevail near Amiens, where both the specimens shown in the Plate were procured.
It is to be remarked that among the implements discovered in the cavern called Kent's Hole, near Torquay, were some identical in form with those of the oval type from Abbeville.
As before observed, in character they do not resemble any of the ordinary stone implements with which I am acquainted, though I believe some few of these also present a cutting edge all round,[1] but at the same time are much thinner, and more triangular than oval or almond-shaped in their form.
The implements most analogous in their oval form to those now under discussion, are some of those found in the mounds or barrows of the valley of the Mississippi, in several of which enormous numbers of lance heads and arrow heads have been discovered. In one of these mounds, within an earthwork on the north fork of Point Creek, there were found, arranged in an orderly manner in layers, some thousands of discs chipped out of hornstone, "some nearly round, others in the form of spear heads; they were of various sizes, but for the most part about six inches long by four wide, and three quarters of an inch or an inch in thickness." From the account given at p. 214, vol. i. of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, it would appear that these weapons were merely roughly blocked out, as if to be afterwards worked into more finished forms, of which many specimens are found: but in the rough-hewn implements shown by the woodcuts in the abovementioned work, there is a very close resemblance to some of the Abbeville forms, though the edges are more jagged.
As to the use which this class of flint implements from the drift was originally intended to fulfil, it is hard to speculate. The workmen who find them usually consider them to have been sling-stones, and such some of the smaller sizes may possibly have been, whether propelled from an ordinary sling or from the end of a cleft stick; many, however, seem to be too large for such a purpose, and were more probably intended for axes cutting at either end, with the handle securely bound round the middle of the stone, and if so there would be a reason why it might be desirable to have one end more pointed than the other, so that one instrument could be applied to two kinds of work. M. de Perthes has suggested, that
- ↑ Catalogue of the Museum of the Archæological Institute at Edinburgh, in 1856, p. 7.
