Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain. 7 



to hatcliets, adzes, or chisels of stone, is so well known, and has been 

 so universally employed, that, though its use has at times led to con- 

 siderable misapprehension, I have thought it best to retain it. It has 

 been fancied by some that the name bore reference to the Celtic 

 people, by whom the implements were supposed to have been made ; 

 and among those who have thought fit to adopt the modern fashion 

 of calling the Celts ' Kelts,' there have been not a few who have 



given the instruments the novel name of ' kelts ' also 



Notwithstanding this misapprehension, there can be no doubt as to 

 the derivation of the word, it being no other than the English form 

 of the Latin celtis or celtes, a chisel." (p. 50.) 



"So far as general character is concerned, stone celts or hatchets 

 may be divided into three classes, which I propose to treat separately 

 as follows : 



" 1. Those merely chipped out in a more or less careful manner, 

 and not ground or polished ; 



"2. Those which, after being fashioned by chipping, have been 

 ground or polished at the edge only ; and 



" 3. Those which are more or less ground or polished, not only at 

 the edge, but over the whole surface." (p. 59.) 



We have spoken chiefly of celts ; but among the 500 illustrations 

 of implements given in Mr. Evans's work, there are figures of various 

 other ancient objects in stone, such as personal ornaments, amulets, 

 etc. ; spindle- whorls, discs, slickstones, weights and cups ; sling- 

 stones and balls ; grinding-stones and whetstones ; flaking-tools ; 

 stone-hammers ; borers, awls, or drills ; flint-cores, etc. 



The implements themselves comprise rough-hewn celts ; celts 

 ground at the edge only; polished celts ; picks, chisels, and gouges, 

 perforated axes, perforated and grooved hammers, flint flakes, 

 scrapers, trimmed flakes, knives, etc. ; javelins and arrow-heads ; 

 and those ruder forms of implements classed as belonging to the 

 " Eiver-drift Period." 



At the conclusion of the chapter on the Manufacture of Stone 

 Implements, which is perhaps the most agreeable and interesting 

 in this most instructive book, the author observes, " Here as elsewhere, 

 we find traces of improvement and progress both in adapting forms 

 to the ends they had to subserve, and in the manner of treating the 

 stubborn materials of which these implements were made. Such 

 progress may not have been, and probably was not, uniform, even 

 in any one country ; and indeed there are breaks in the chronology 

 of stone implements which it is hard to fill up ; but any one com- 

 paring, for instance, the exquisitely-made axe-hammers and delicately- 

 chipped flint arrow-heads of the Bronze Age, with the rude im- 

 plements of the Palaeolithic Period, — -neatly chipped as some of these 

 latter are,— cannot but perceive the advances that had been made 

 in skill, and in adaptation of means to ends. If, for the sake of 

 illustration, we divide the lapse of time embraced between these 

 two extremes into four Periods, it appears — 



"1. That in the Palaeolithic Eiver-Gravel, or Drift-Period, im- 

 plements were fashioned by chipping only, and not ground or 



