In the collection (now in the British Museum) of the late Mr. J. F. Lucas, is an instrument of this kind, 3 inches over, found at Arbor Low, Derbyshire, in 1867. He kindly presented me with another, closely resembling Fig. 257, and found at Mining Low. He also possessed a remarkably fine knife of this form, but with the edge unground, which was found at Newhaven, Derbyshire, and is shown in Fig. 258. An example more pear-shaped in outline and ground half-way round the edge, found near Whitby, has been figured.[1548] I have a fine one (4 inches) more rhomboidal from Swaffham Fen, Cambridge, and another smaller from Burwell. From the latter place I have an oval knife made from a broad external flake (2 3∕4 inches) ground along one side, and a thick one also of oval form from Icklingham. In all the specimens with the circular edge sharpened by grinding, the flat side has been purposely made blunt, as if for being held in the hand. The backs, however, may have been let into wooden handles, in which case these instruments would have been the exact counterparts of the Ulus, or Women’s knives of the Eskimos.[1549] [Illustration: Fig. 259.—Harome, Yorkshire. 1∕2] Though not formed of flint, but of a hard slaty rock of the nature of hone-stone, an implement of much the same form as that from Fimber[1550] may be here described. It was found at Harome, in Ryedale, Yorkshire, and is in the Greenwell Collection, now Dr. Allen Sturge’s. As will be seen from Fig. 259, it approximates in form to an equilateral spherical triangle with the apices rounded. It is carefully polished over the whole of both faces, except where small portions have broken away, owing to the lamination of the stone. Each of the three sides is ground to a cutting edge, which however is not continued over the angles; these are rounded in both directions, as each would probably be in contact with the palm of the hand when the opposite edge was used for cutting. |344| There can be no doubt that all these triangular instruments, whether of flint or other material, were used as cutting tools; and the name of skinning-knife, which has been applied to them as well as to the quadrangular instruments, not improbably denotes one of the principal purposes for which they were made. [Illustration: Fig. 260.—Harome, Yorkshire. 1∕2]