342 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
STONE ADZE FKOM AVONWICK. 
Mr. Ellery A. Bennett, of Plymouth, in September, 1889, 
found an adze of stone in a field on Woodland Farm, Ugborough, 
near Avonwick. It was lying on the grass, and had evidently 
been exposed some little time, as while one side w T as partly coated 
with soil-crust, the other was clean and somewhat bleached, as if 
by the action of rain and sun. The colour is a dull ochrey-grey. 
In the absence of a fresh fracture there was some little difficulty 
in arriving at a conclusion as to the material ; but it appears to 
have been wrought out of a felstone or el van which has suffered 
some surface decomposition, and originally seems to have been of 
a bluish-grey. There is a quasi -granular character however which 
somewhat suggests an indurated tuff. It can now be cut with a 
knife. It is a blunted ovoid in shape, exceedingly well formed 
and symmetrical, and seems to have been originally brought to as 
fine a finish as the texture of the rock permitted. Extreme 
length, 3|- in. ; extreme breadth (half an inch from outer point of 
cutting edge), 2 T 5 ^- in.; breadth within half-inch of butt (where 
the rounding off begins), \\ in.; greatest thickness, \\ in. The 
hole has been pierced from both sides — the openings meeting at a 
ridge in the middle, which forms the narrowest part of the 
aperture — and is fairly rounded. The opening on one side is 
approximately an inch in diameter every way, that on the other 
is slightly oval — an inch in the longest diameter by |- in the 
shortest. The internal or smallest portion of the hole is just T 9 F 
in diameter. The breadth of the outer margin of the aperture 
reduces the central thickness of the adze as seen in section to the 
extent of an eighth of an inch on one side and a little over a 
sixteenth on the other. 
Save that it is better formed, this implement closely resembles 
a greenstone adze found at North Bovey in 1865, described by 
Mr. G. W. Ormerod, f.g.s., and figured in Evans's Stone Imple- 
ments. Length, 3f in. ; breadth, 2^ in. ; thickness, 1^ in. ; diameter 
of hole, ~ inch. 
