STONE IMPLEMENTS, ETC., IN THE DORSET MUSEUM. 23 



the necessary product of the work on large implements. Many of 

 them may have been never put to any use. On the other hand 

 numbers of them have such a keen edge that they might, and 

 doubtless did, serve for knives. Indeed, to my eye they look far 

 more useful for cutting purposes than what are considered to be 

 carefully fashioned knives. There is a long flake, for instance, 

 from Laurence Barrow, the edge of which might pretty successfully 

 be used -to hack a rough slice off a roast boar from Poundbury Een. 

 It is probable that with simple keen flint flakes it was that, if not 

 here, yet on the Continent, the ancient Celtic folk actually 

 trepanned skulls. The scrapers are flakes, varying from about 

 three inches in diameter down to little more than half-an-inch. 

 By minute flaking they are for the most part brought to a more or 

 less exactly semicircular blunt edge. Evans speaks of some being 

 ground. I see no such edges here. But one or two have that 

 look from a strange curve in the cleavage. I cannot myself under- 

 stand that they could serve for cutting anything. From analogy 

 of Esquimaux use, and from difficulty of assigning any other 

 purpose for them, they are believed to have been for scraping 

 hides, and perhaps wood, bone, and horn. They very likely were 

 often inserted in a handle, as is the custom with the Esquimaux. 

 Preparation of skins was no doubt an important industry among 

 the Celts. Yet the multitude of scrapers still found seems to me 

 a puzzle. A different and less common class of scraper is well illus- 

 trated among the Hogg and Smart specimens (PI. I., figs. 5 and 6). 

 They are wrought, with great pains and skill, to a more or less 

 regular crescent edge, some at the end, others at the side. Almost 

 certainly these were for scraping arrow and lance shafts, and also for 

 sharpening tines of deer horns, which seem to have been used as 

 daggers. Some flints of this shape are, however, thought by Evans 

 to be strike -lights. These scrapers, too, at least the smaller ones, 

 were no doubt the tools used for making bone pins, bodkins, and 

 borers. Among scrapers I should, probably, name the carefully 

 worked specimens sometimes found both here and elsewhere in 

 undoubtedly ancient sites, and yet having an extraordinary 



