208 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



instrument had been used, while the several grooves, made to carry out the idea 

 of the sculptor, indicate as plainly that the instrument by which they were made 

 had what we should call a rounded edge, like that of a dull hatchet, as the 

 grooves are wider at the top than at the bottom, and the striae show that they 

 were made by a sort of sawing motion, or a rubbing of the instrument backwards 

 and forwards. In fact, the carver's tool might have been almost any stone 

 implement, from an arrow-head to a skin-scraper, or any piece of hard, roughly- 

 chipped stone. 



t 



FIG. 352. Stone-carving representing a fish. Ipswich. 



" The figure represents the stone of natural size, its total length being two 

 and a half inches. It is of general uniform thickness, about one-fifth of an inch, 

 except where the angles are slightly rounded off on the front of the head and on 

 the abdominal outline, and the portion representing the forked tail, or caudal 

 fin, which is rapidly and symmetrically thinned to its edges, as is the notched 

 portion representing the dorsal fin. 



" The carving was evidently intended to represent a fish, with some peculiar 

 ideas of the artist added and several important characters left out. The three 

 longitudinal grooves in front represent the mouth and jaws, while the transverse 

 groove at their termination gives a limit to the length of the jaw, and a very 

 decided groove on the under side divides the under jaw into its right and left 

 portions. The eyes are represented as slight depressions at the top of the head. 

 The head is separated from the abdominal portion by a decided groove, and the 

 caudal fin is well represented by the forked portion, from the centre of which the 

 rounded termination of the whole projects. In this part there is an irregularly 

 made hole of a size large enough to allow a strong cord to pass through for the 

 purpose of suspension. The portion of the sculpture rising in the place of a 

 dorsal fin is in several ways a singular conception of the ancient carver. While 

 holding the position of a dorsal fin, it points the wrong way, if we regard the 

 portion looking so much like a shark's tooth as intended to represent the fin as 

 a whole. It is very likely that the designer wished to show that the fin was not 

 connected with the head, and, as he was confined by the length of the piece of 

 stone, after making the head so much out of proportion, he was forced to cut 



