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a much finer ware: at P.C.K. there was painted pottery as well as the rougher vessels of everyday use. This whole find came from the region corresponding to the C-D of the excavation at about 50 ins. At a short distance to each side we found fragments of an old friend, a pot which figured in H.K.N. III, Plate 39, No. 28. ("Double-F" of a peculiar style) and of which we recovered scores of fragments in the later excavation of "C-D." The levels at which these "Double F" fragments were found seem to reach their limit just about 60 ins. and mostly to lie rather about 40-50.
This implement is of a sandstone, slightly purplish in colour. Again, only the edge region is cleanly polished: the implement becomes thicker and rougher towards the back or grip region.
The third piece Plate 11 C, found with this last, is of a harder schist in which thicker red layers are separated by very fine layers of grey-blue- black mica: one face is just one such cleavage plane. The other has a marked lumpy projection along one of the shorter sides and a slighter ridge bounding the other. The edge is fan-shaped and the central part agrees fairly well with the curve of Plate 11 D. The edge does not lie in one plane but makes a sigmoid curve: it is produced by two bevels but gives the impression of being the result of a scraping action: it might be caused if the thing were a hand-whet-stone to be held in the left hand with the lumpy part well in the palm: sharpening a knife by strokes such as farmers make when sharpening a scythe would well explain the sigmoid line and the fading off of the bevels, one at the one extremity and the other at the opposite end. The material of the stone resembles somewhat the saws but has less quartz.
In general shape, this piece strangely resembles the "scrapers" or "epimioliths" published by Professor Shellshear (24) Plate VIII (6) or the piece from Lamma K. The straight edge is the result of a preliminary fracture along a cleavage plane: the concave side has been got by trimming down a fracture.
Next come the two interesting pieces, one D from Tai Wan, the other, E from HSY, the latter obviously roughly prepared to be what the former has actually become: the notable difference being that the Tai Wan has a saw-cut back that is slightly convex, while the HSY piece has a concave back. The most interesting thing about these is that one knows so little about them. The shape resembles that of the "Haches courtes" of the Hwa-binhian, e.g. the large specimen reproduced after Mdlle. Colani in (25) figure 3: this Indo-China implement is of course much older, unlika in finish and material, but in size it is not much smaller our piece (143 189 mm.). Both Lamma specimens were picked up loose having previously been displaced by somebody digging. The more finished article is a very soft shale stone which has somewhat the feel and look of pig-skin leather, an impression reinforced' by a varnish of tar-like oxydization which resembles the oxydization remarked on the rings (H.K.N. VI p. 51) and on the Aberdeen adze (H.K.N., IV, Plate XIX, 11). This coating is much heavier on one side, the rougher one: it seems morcover to have
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
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