Know.Es— On Pre-historic Implements, Se. 113 
would say both were intended for the same purpose. Now, what was 
the use of that stone, and what is it doing there? The answer is now 
plain tome. It is an anvil stone which the ancient people who lived 
in these Rock Shelters used for laying the flint cores on when they 
wanted to strike off flakes. When I first found tool stones at Port- 
stewart and Ballintoy, I had no doubt in my mind that they were of 
the same age as the flint implements that were found with them, but 
I knew that Sir William Wilde and Sir John Lubbock had expressed 
doubt as to whether this class of objects belonged to the Stone Age, 
and I hesitated about expressing my opinion too strongly. Mr. Evans 
reviews the question in a very fair way in ‘“‘Stone Implements and 
Ornaments,’ but I think he speaks rather unguardedly against the 
view that they are of the Stone Age in his Presidential Address to the 
members of the Anthropological Institute, delivered on 29th January, 
1878. He states, when reviewing a Paper of mine, that if it could be 
proved that the tool stones and scrapers were contemporaneous, he 
would more readily accept the scrapers as belonging to the Age of Iron 
than the tool stones as belonging to the Age of Stone. I regret having 
to differ from one whose great experience and knowledge of the sub- 
ject so well entitles him to pronounce judgment on any point; but if 
the theory I have stated is found correct, as I believe it will be, these 
implements, instead of belonging only to the early Iron Age, must be 
regarded as belonging peculiarly to the Stone Age, and even extending 
back to the early Stone Age. 
A variety of other objects have been found, for example—grain 
rubbers, pottery, and a portion of a jet ring or bracelet. The pottery 
was found only in fragments; some ornamented in the usual style of 
burial urns, and other pieces which were turned out from the black 
layer had a peculiar smoothed and polished appearance on the outside. 
I believe all the fragments were pieces of domestic vessels. 
In the other Sandhills we found great quantities of teeth and 
bones, broken and split, also cut in various ways, and some of them 
manuiactured into useful objects, such as pins and needles. Professor 
A. Leith Adams found that those of man, horse, ox, dog or wolf, fox, 
deer, and hog were contained among them; but, though we find bones 
mixed up with the stone objects at Dundrum, they are not in a good 
state of preservation, and I was only able to determine with certainty 
the teeth of horse and ox. 
It would be interesting to have experiments made to test the rate 
at which sand accumulates on the top of the grass-covered hills. I 
have tried it at Portstewart; but owing to living at a distance, and 
cattle grazing on the hills, as well as people walking at liberty over 
all parts of them in search of game, my experiments were not satis- 
factory. The best evidence I have got of their slow growth was from 
the Dowager Marchioness of Downshire, who informed me that small 
hills, covered with bent, had slowly risen up in a place where it was 
formerly bare sand, and at almost sea level, since she went first to live 
at Murlough forty years ago. 
R.I.A. PROC., SER. II. VOL. Il.—POL. LIT. AND ANTIQ. eV 
