________________
188
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1906.
Below the sand lies a bed of peat some four feet in thickness, and beneath this is a bed of valuable iron ore, which is now being worked. A horn and part of the skull of Bos primigenius (B. urus, Linn.) have been found in the peat. The remains of this animal, the urus of Caesar, are common in the Danish kitchen middens,' and are also found in the lake-dwellings of Continental Europe. (Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 2nd ed., pp. 14, 24, 25, 370.)
The pygmy flints are found only on the floors under the sand, not either in the superincumbent sand, or in the peat below.
Water is very scarce in the neighbourhood. There are no remains of earthworks or of implements suitable for fighting or the chase. The traces of Roman occupation seem to be of later date.
No large implements or polished tools occur with the 'pygmies' in the sand-holes. The few ordinary chipped implements of neolithic type, which are found occasionally, are of very rough fashion, being mostly mere flakes, with an occasional coarsely made arrow-head, and seem, from their stratigraphical position, to belong to the same period as the miniature ones.
The most common form of the latter is an irregular quadrilateral or rough circle, which may be termed a 'scraper.' A triangular form occurs occasionallya right-angled isosceles triangle with a base considerably longer than the sides. The scrapers' are so minute that sixty-four of the circular shape weigh less than half an ounce. These often show traces of wear on the edges. A few triangular arrow-heads occur, some of which are only ths of an inch long. The crescent-shaped implements, so abundant in the Vindhyan caves, are rare at Scunthorpe. M. Seidler, formerly Curator of the Museum at Nantes, into whose hands Mr. Carlleyle's notes and collections passed, has compared the Vindhyan and Scunthorpe forms, with the following result:
Smallest crescent ..
scalene...
rounded and pointed
rhomboidal and trapezoidal
32
Vindhya. inch.
...
16
33
Scunthorpe. inchi.
19
37
It thus appears that while the specimens from both localities agree exactly in form, the sizes at Scunthorpe are considerably smaller. Mr. Gatty emphasizes the fact of the exact agreement in form by the explicit statements that "Carlleyle's four types [i. e., those mentioned by M. Seidler] appear at Scunthorpe line for line, angle for angle. This is not the case with arrow-heads or even scrapers, which vary all over the world... The Indian caves produced four special implements. All these occur at Scunthorpe, and if you mix them with Indians,' you can only separate them by picking out those of chalcedony for Indian, though even this is not safe, as some of the Scunthorpes' are made of chalcedony." The specimens obtained by Dr. Colley March on the Rochdale moors similarly agree' flint for flint' with the Indian and Scunthorpe types, so that no mistake is possible.'
""
39
No cores have been found at Scunthorpe, althongh Mr. Carlleyle obtained them freely in India, and they also occur in Belgium, where they are about an inch in height. The core found by Sir John Evans at Weaversthorpe in Yorkshire, which is only 85 inch high, evidently was used for the manufacture of minute implements like those found at Scunthorpe. (Anc. Stone Implements, 2nd ed., p. 276, fig. 189.)
Scunthorpe is not the only English site for pygmies,' but nowhere else are they found so small in size, and in such immense numbers. Mr. Gatty has, however, obtained thousands on the surface of the valley of the Don, between Sheffield and Doncaster; and a collection made by Dr. Colley March in the Pennine Hills, between Bradfield and Sheffield (E. Lancashire), is in the
