136 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



girth ; a hole had been bored through the beam, in which 

 was a piece of wood one inch and three-quarters long, 

 apparently the remains of a handle. The implement was 

 truncated at one end, and shaped so that it could have been 

 used as a hammer, whilst the opposite end was smooth and 

 bevelled to a chisel or axe-shaped edge formed by the hard 

 external part of the antler. 1 There can be no doubt that 

 this implement resembled those found alongside of the 

 Airthrey and Blair Drummond whales earlier in the century, 

 and it effectually disposes of the statement that they were 

 lances or harpoons. Dug-out canoes have indeed been 

 found imbedded in the carse clays at a similar level, so that 

 the people of that day had discovered a means of chasing 

 the whale in the water ; one can, however, scarcely conceive 

 it possible to manufacture a horn implement sufficient to 

 penetrate the tough skin and blubber of one of these huge 

 animals, and to hold it in its efforts to escape. It is much 

 more probable that the whale had been stranded at the ebb 

 of the tide in the shallower water near the shore, and that 

 the people had descended from the neighbouring heights, 

 and had used their horn implements, with their chisel-like 

 edges, to flense the carcase of its load of flesh and blubber, 

 and had carried the spoil to their respective habitations. 

 There can be little doubt that these implements rank, along 

 with the dug-out canoes, as the oldest relics made with 

 human hands which have up to this time been found in 

 Scotland, and that they belong to the earliest period of 

 occupation by Neolithic man. 



After the oscillations in the relative level of land and 

 sea had ceased, and the beach found at the present day had 

 been formed, evidence of the presence of Neolithic man, and 

 of mammals, both wild and domesticated, such as now exist 

 in Scotland, becomes greatly multiplied. 



Shallow caves or rock shelters situated in the cliff which 

 bounds the esplanade at Oban Bay, which, after being closed 

 for centuries by a landslide from the adjacent height, had 

 recently been quarried into in obtaining stone for building 



1 I described this implement in "Reports of British Association, iSSg/'p. 790. 

 has subsequently been figured in a Report by Dr. Munro in the " Proceedings 

 the Society of Antiquaries," 1896. 



