The stones with cup-shaped[942] depressions in them, found in the caves of the Reindeer Period in the south of France, have the hollows, in nearly all instances, upon one of their faces only, and have therefore more probably served as mortars than as hammers. The pebbles, from the same caves, which have been used as knapping or chipping stones, are usually left in their natural condition on the faces, though worn away at the edges, sometimes over the whole periphery. A very few of the hollowed stones show signs of use at the edges. Stones with cup-shaped[943] depressions, like those from the French caves, are in use in Siberia for crushing nuts and the seeds of the Cembro Pine; and among the natives of Australia[944] for pounding a bulbous root called _bellilah_, and the roasted bark of trees and shrubs for food. Some Carib examples of the same kind are in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen, as well as some from Africa, used in the preparation of poison. |246| Some of the so-called corn-crushers[945] and mealing-stones from the Swiss Lake-dwellings have shallow depressions on the faces, but for the most part they belong to the class to be subsequently described. I have one of granite, from Nussdorf, with a depression on one face, in which the thumb can be placed, while the forefinger lies in a groove, like that of a pulley, which extends about half-way round the stone. The opposite part of the edge is much worn by hammering. It approximates in form to the pulley-like stones to which the name of sling-stones has been given, but the use of which is at present a mystery. A hammer-stone, curiously like that which I have engraved as Fig. 165, is among those found in the settlements of the Lac du Bourget,[946] by M. Rabut. This or a similar one is in the British Museum. Another from Picardy[947] has been figured. [Illustration: Fig. 166.—Scamridge. 1∕2] A hammer-stone, if so it may be called, of bronze, is among the antiquities from Greenland in the Ethnological Museum at Copenhagen. Occasionally the depression is reduced to a minimum, and consists of merely a slight notch or roughening on one or both faces of the pebble which has served as a hammer or pounding-stone.