They are for the most part made from metamorphic or volcanic rocks, and occasionally from quartzite, but I have never seen a British perforated axe made from ordinary flint, though hammers of this material are known. Stukeley,[636] indeed, mentions that in cleansing the moat at Tabley, near Knutsford, “they found an old British axe, or some such thing, made of large flint, neatly ground into an edge, with a hole in the middle to fasten into a handle; it would serve for a battle-axe.” Stukeley was probably mistaken as to the material; but there are in the Museum at Copenhagen one or two flint axes ground to an edge, the |184| shaft-holes in which are natural, and no doubt led to the stones being selected for the purpose to which they were applied. An artificially-perforated French specimen will subsequently be mentioned. Flints both naturally and artificially perforated, have also been occasionally converted into hammers and maces. In Scandinavia and Northern Germany, perforated axes and axe-hammers are frequently known as Thor’s hammers, as already mentioned,[637] and some authors have maintained that they were in use for warlike purposes so late as eight or ten centuries after our era. Kruse,[638] however, has urged that though found in the neighbourhood of graves of the Iron Age in Livonia and Courland, they are never found in the graves themselves, and that their use is not mentioned in any ancient histories. The principal forms may be classified as follows:— 1. Double-edged axes, or those with a cutting, or but slightly blunted edge at either end. 2. Adzes, or implements with the edge at right angles to the shaft-hole. 3. Axes with the edge at one end only, the hole being near the other end, which is rounded. These shade off into— 4. Axe-hammers sharp at one end, and more or less hammer-like at the other, the shaft-hole being usually near the centre. To the weapons of the first of these classes the name of Amazon Axe has been applied by Professor Nilsson;[639] but the Scandinavian axes expanding considerably at the cutting ends, resemble the _Amazonia securis_ of classical sculpture more than do the English specimens. * * * * * Fig. 118 represents a beautifully formed axe of the first class, in my own collection. It is of greenstone, and was found near Hunmanby, Yorkshire. The two sides are concave longitudinally, so that it expands towards the edges. They are also slightly concave transversely. The angles are rounded, and the edges are blunt, especially that at the shorter end. The shaft-hole is oval, and tapers slightly from each end towards the middle. It would appear to have been worked out with some sort of chisel, and to have been afterwards made smoother by grinding.