Among the rarer stone implements which occur among the relics of Europe’s neolithic arts are certain objects which, though of small size, otherwise so closely resemble the most highly finished mining hammers that they have been generally designated hammer-stones. A more careful and discriminating study of them, however, has led to the assignment of them to a totally different purpose. An example found near Ambleside, Westmoreland, and figured in the _Archæological Journal_,[39] shows a well-finished ovoid implement of stone, with a deep groove round the middle. Others have been repeatedly found in the neighbourhood of the English lakes, as well as in other localities; and as they show no traces of being battered or worn from use in hammering, and are frequently made of sandstone or other material unsuited for such a purpose, they are now generally regarded as sinkers for nets or fishing lines. Objects of nearly similar form, but most frequently made of diorite, granite, or other equally hard rocks, occur among the stone implements of the Ohio Valley. Many of them measure from 3 to 4 inches long. But while in them also the absence of any marks of abrasion or battering serves to show that they were not used as hammers, a hard and heavy material appears to have been preferred in their construction. Hence it has been surmised that they were the weights attached to a hunting thong, or lasso; though they would equally serve as sinkers for the fisherman’s nets. One of them, from a mound in Kentucky, is shown in Fig. 19. It is of granite, and carefully finished, but a hard siliceous concretion at one end has resisted the efforts of the workman to reduce it to perfect symmetry. The attempt to determine the uses for which implements were made, under circumstances so wholly different from everything we are familiar with, is at best guesswork. But it seems unlikely that so much labour and skill would be expended in fashioning such intractable material into symmetrical shape for a mere net-sinker. In the collection of Mr. Merrin is a large implement of the same form, weighing fully eighteen pounds. It was found on the site of the Lockport Mound, at Newark, along with numerous other stone, shell, mica, and copper relics. Its size and weight at once suggest the idea of its use as a miner’s maul; but it is made of sandstone, and retains no traces of use as a hammer. It is equally inapplicable for the hunter’s lasso and the fisher’s net; and if designed for a weight, must have been for some very different purpose. [Illustration: FIG. 19.—Lasso Stone, Kentucky.]