82 (UTP-SHAPED AND OTHER LAPIDARIAN SCULPTURES. 



in their neighborhood. In North Northumberhmd, indeed, considerable 

 numbers of bronze celts have been discovered, and also bronze daggers, 

 spear-heads and swords. Mr. Tate further refers to querns taken from some 

 Northumbrian forts, and made of hard, untractable porphyry, which, he 

 believes, could not have been fashioned by any stone tool, and he therefore 

 argues that the Northumbrian sculptures generally were made by means of 

 tools of metal, probably of bronze. Mr. Tate seems to underrate the 

 efficiency of flint instruments, when applied to hard stones.* 



Mr. Tate offers no definite view with regard to the meaning of these 

 rock-sculptures, but considers them as symbolical — most probably of relig- 

 ious ideas. However, he seems to have a leaning toward the belief that 

 they originated with the Druids, and were connected in different ways with 

 the rites of that powerful priesthood. In support of this very cautiously 

 advanced view he quotes passages from Pliny, Mela and Strabo. 



*The question was practically solved during the International Anthropological Congress, held at 

 Paris in the year 1867. There are in the Musenm of Saint-Germain casts of the sculptured stone plates 

 forming portions of the tumulus dolmen on the Island of Gavr' Inis, Brittany. These slabs, consist- 

 ing of compact granite, exhibit, as we have seen, surfaces covered all over with intricate curved lines 

 and other designs. The savants who were present considered it impossible to execute such sculptures 

 without employing tools of steel or hardened bronze. But M. Alexandre Bertrand, the director of the 

 museum, was of different opinion, and ijroceeded to make a trial. A piece of the same granite was 

 worked with stone implements, and the experiment proved to be a perfect success. After a day's labor, 

 a circle and a few lines were engraved. A chisel of polished flint used during the whole time was 

 hardly injured ; one of nephrite had become somewhat blunted, and a similar implement of greenstone 

 still more. But the edge of a bronze axe used in the operation was instantly bent, and it became evi- 

 dent that those sculptures had not been executed with bronze, but with stone. This account is given 

 by Professor Carl Vogt in one of a series of letlers addressed, in 1867, from Paris to the Cologne Gazette. 

 I have quoted it before this in the Smithsonian publication entitled "The Palenque Tablet in the United 

 States National Museum." 



A similar experiment, made at the suggestion of Professor Simpson, is thus described by him: — 



"I have found experimentally that the rings and cups can be engraved deeply and without dif- 

 ficulty upon the Argyleshire schist, and even upon hard Aberdeen granite, with a flint celt and a wooden 

 mallet. In the Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum there is a block of gray Aberdeen granite from Kintore, 

 forming one of the sculptured stones of Scotland, an<l containing upon one side two crescents, etc. On 

 the back of this hard granite Mr. Robert Paul, the doorkeeper of the Musenm, tried for me the experi- 

 ment I allude to, and cut, in two hours, two-thirds of a circle with a flint and a wooden mallet. The 

 flint used was about three inches long, an inch in breadth, and about a quarter of an inch in thickness. 

 The circle which he sculptured with it in the granite was seven inches in diameter; and the incision 

 itself was nearly three-quarters of an inch broad, above a quarter of an inch in depth, and very smooth 

 on its cut surface. In hewing out the circle with the flint, its sharji tips from time to time broke off, 

 but another F.harii edge was always immediately obtained by merely turning it round. 



"The result of this simple and decisive exijeriment seems to me to be important, as showing that 

 if these archaic cuttings could be sculptured alike either by stone or by nietaUic tools, their mere 

 character and form afford no evidence whatsoever that they were not carved till after the discovery 

 and use of metallic implements. In other words, the experiment shows that they might have been 

 produced before the introduction of metals — or during the Stone age." — Archaic Sculjjtitres, etc.; p. 122. 



