REV. R. A. BULLEN, B.A., ON EOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. 201 
any material, such as a sapling or some soft wood, for 
instance, these chipped surfaces would always present cut- 
ting edges to the material operated on as the tool was 
rotated. They are analogous to the “engineer's bit.” 
These drills occur in the plateau gravels in a series from 
the bluntest point up to a fine boring tool. 
They resemble in their general idea the beautifully 
worked poits of the bone-needle-borers described and 
figured in the Reliquie Aquitanica, pp. 1384, 141. Of course 
I do not suggest that the larger and coarser borers were 
used for making needles, only that the general idea of the 
piercer is the same. 
Mr. B. Harrison, from evidence of travellers who have 
seen his collection,* is of opinion that Eolithic man used some 
of the scraper-stones for rubbing the hard skin of the foot to 
prevent painful cracks and corns which cause lameness. 
For the same reason he believes that some of the larger 
curved stones were used for scraping the hmbs and body to 
soften and supple the skin. At any rate it is certain that 
the luxurious Romans used the strigil or scraper made of 
horn or metal,f to add to the comfort of the baths (therme), 
and kept slaves for the purpose of scraping them with that 
instrument. This practice of scraping the body after the 
bath was seemingly derived from the Greeks, among whom 
it may have survived from early times. An instrument 
(otrexyyis)t (at Sparta made of reeds, elsewhere of metal) 
was used to scrape the limbs and body after the bath, and 
the exertions of the palestra, in the latter case in order to 
remove the oil and sand from the body after a wrestling 
match. Its form otpeyyis is akin to the Latin strigil. The 
anointing was probably post-Homeric, but that is no 
evidence that the scraping was not a more ancient practice. 
At any rate the possibility of the scraping of the body with 
hollow scrapers to conduce to its comfort is not to be 
dismissed with a gibe.$ 
* Transactions of S.E. Union of Scientific Societies, 1899, pp. 15, 16. 
+ Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary, sub “ strigil.” 
{ Guhl and Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romans, p. 220. 
§ Consult Becker, Gallus, ELveursus J, p. 394 (Longman’s “Silver 
Library”). Ramsay, Manual of Roman Antiquities, 10th Ed., 1876, 
p. 484. See also Professor T. Rupert Jones, Vat. Science, October, 1894, 
para. 5, p. 272, for the probable wants of Eolithic man and consequent » 
implements. 
