Explorations in the Bone Cave of Ballynamintra. 215 
metatarsus of a small deer or goat, both ends having been pared off, a conical hole 
cut in the distal end, and another hole cut transversely through the shaft with 
some sharp instrument ; colour, yellowish ; not brittle ; length, 2°6 inches. Found, 
20th May, 1879, about fourteen feet from the entrance, in the brown earth. 
Stone Implements. 
9. Polished Celt (Plate XIII, fig. 5), flattened at the sides, approaching the trian- 
gular form, which Mr. Robert Day, r.s.a., of Cork, the well-known Irish Antiquary, 
states to be an unusual form of Irish Celt, very symmetrically wrought, of dark 
greenish stone ;* length, 4°3 inches; greatest breadth, 2°6 inches; greatest thick- 
ness, ‘85 inch. This is the only polished stone implement met with in the cave. 
~ Found, 18th April, 1879, three feet outside the entrance, under the right-flanking 
wall, in the brown earth, with bones of hare and goat. 
The other stones found in the cave, that show traces of human use, will be 
better described collectively, and separately alluded to in passing. They are 
invested with a peculiar interest by their association, in the same deposits, with 
other relics of man and remains of the Irish elk and bear. But five of them are 
recorded from the brown earth—by far the largest proportion having been found 
in the second or grey stratum, in which the bones of Irish elk were most numerous. 
With one exception, they are all worn and more or less rounded fragments of the 
old red sandstone rocks, similar to the stones in the drift-beds of the valley and in 
the surface-soil. 
Sharpened Stones or Rude Celts. 
No. XXVIII. A worn piece of purplish, micaceous sandstone, is of the flattened 
ovate shape of some Celts. This natural similarity was completed by art, for the 
extremity is ground down on both sides to an edge. Its sides, moreover, were 
chipped like the hammer-stones in the following group, among which it is also 
numbered. It was found in a rock-crevice with the knife-handle (No. 4, above), 
and bones of bear. 
No. XLIV. Is a tapering piece of sandstone, ground down on both sides at the 
tapering end. This implement was found more than twenty feet outside the cave’s 
mouth, in the brown earth. 
Hammer-Stones. 
Of the thirty-five specimens preserved, twenty-seven may be termed hammer 
stones. These were of shapes convenient for using in the hand, and show unmis- 
takeable marks of having served for striking and cleaving with, possibly for smash- 
ing the bones to get at the marrow. Some had merely lost a chip or two from their 
edges, while others, such as Nos. VI. and VII. (Plate XIIL, fig. 10), and No. XXVII. 
* Mr. Kinahan considers this Celt to be the green basic felstone (the eurite of Daubuisson), so charac- 
teristic of the cambro-silurian of Waterford, Wexford, and Wicklow. 
