94 DISCOVERY OF AN ANCIENT STONE IMPLEMENT. 



apparatus." It has been suggested that this Guernsey stone 

 may have been used for sharpening stone implements, but as 

 these are generally narrower than the stone, they would have 

 produced irregularities in the smoothed surface of the stone 

 in the direction of its length. No such marks appear. 



Whatever was the special use of our stone, it is some 

 kind of Neolithic implement, so its discovery is of great 

 importance as giving a clue to the age of the clay deposit of 

 the island. Such a stone could not have been brought here in 

 the waters of the flood, which deposited the clay on our high- 

 est lands. It must have been brought here by man from its 

 place of origin, Alderney or France, and used near the locality 

 where it was found. It may have been carried some short 

 distance, and then surrounded and covered by the clay deposit. 

 Accepting the statement that the clay was undisturbed, we 

 have proof that it was deposited during or subsequent to the 

 Neolithic period. The dolmen are also supposed to be the 

 work of Neolithic man, but are bedded in the clay, and are 

 therefore subsequent to it ; so that our stone belongs to an 

 early Neolithic period, and the Cromlechs to a later one, and 

 the island was inhabited in both eras. 



