134 J. Cockburn—Wotes on Stone Inplements. [No. 3, 
a similar weathered coating. I cannot certify to the locality, for my Khasia 
friend had decidedly loose notions as to the value of truth, but am of opi- 
nion that it was also found on the Shillong plateau. In shape, it 
somewhat resembles the small Jade specimens from Yunanand may be 
considered as a form grading into the shouldered type of celt. I may 
mention that it bears a good deal of resemblance to the chisel used at the 
present day in file cutting. These celts of slate could hardly have been 
used as anything else but agricultural implements, hoés &c., as pointed out 
by Col. Godwin-Austen ; but I would suggest that besides being used as 
instruments for digging up roots &c., fixed in a rude horn or wood 
handle, the chief use of celts of the smaller type from 6” to 2”, made 
of greenstone or chert, was for flaying animals. The specimen figured at 
p- 251, Fig. 161, of the Cutalogue of Antiquities of the Royal Trish 
Academy well illustrates how these small celts were handled, probably 
fixed with some hard resin, like the “ black boy”? gum of Australia, in a 
cavity scooped beneath the burr of a shed antler with a few inches of 
beam attached, so as to form a small handle. I was struck with this idea 
from the facility with which I have seen Chamars in the Cawnpore 
District, skin Nilgai (Portar tragocamelus), with their rude khirpas 
(an instrument like a flat metal celt, fixed into an obtusely angular 
handle, made of a branch of a tree and used chiefly for scraping up grass). 
I have not the least doubt that their aboriginal ancestors used these small 
celts, which were similarly handled, as deftly for this purpose in their day. 
I would myself undertake to skin in a couple of hours an animal the 
size of a heifer with a celt handled and sharpened, and the assistance of a 
few flint flakes or shells.* 
* TI find I have been perhaps anticipated in the above remarks by Mr. V. Ball, 
in a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy on the 30th of November, 1878, but 
of which I did not see a copy till June last, while my paper was written in the previous 
November. I here copy this portion of Mr. Ball’s paper. ‘There is one class of stone 
implements unsuited to any of the above-mentioned purposes, but which being provided 
with sharp edges it seems very probable were used as skin-serapers. In connexion with 
this, Imay mention that on one occasion in the Satpura Hills in the Central Provinces, 
haying shot a bear I gave the carcase, with some knives to the people who had brought 
it to camp, in order that they might take off the skin. These people belong to a tribe 
who always carry a very small well-sharpened iron axe of a form I have not seen else- 
where. After working for a short time with the knives, they discarded them for the 
axes, which they removed from their wooden handles, and then placing their thumbs 
in the holes grasped them firmly in their fingers, and continued the flaying with as- 
tonishing rapidity. In a similar way, I believe that the scrapers of stone may have 
been used for the preparation of skins, which when rudely dressed afforded the only 
clothing of these early inhabitants.’’ I may here remark that these small curved axes 
are used throughout Bundlekhand, and that I always carried one myself for many years 
on shooting excursions. 
