Archaeologia Cambrensis.

FOURTH SERIES.-No. XIX.

JULY, 1874.

STONE IMPLEMENTS, ANGLESEY.

In the early part of last November (1873) I called at Quirt, or as it ought more correctly to be written Cwyrt, the residence of Hugh Owen, Esq., in the parish of Llangeinwen, Anglesey. The spot was visited by some members of our Association during or soon after the Carnarvon meeting (Sept. 1848), and is referred to by Rowlands in his Antiquitates Parochiales (see Archæologia Cambrensis, vol. i, p. 315, July, 1846, supplement). A short notice of the small chapel there, having a figure painted on the plaster of the northern wall, is given in Archæologia Cambrensis, vol. ii, P. 41, January, 1847. While standing at the door I happened to turn towards a pretty piece of rockwork in the flower garden before the house, when among the stones forming it I spied the implement, No. 1, of the series now under consideration. The pattern is the same on both sides and consists of four pellets in low relief, from between which on either side of the transverse groove spring two incised lines diverging as they are continued outwardly to the moulding that lies along the edge at either end of the stone. The length is five and one-eighth inches, greatest breadth three and a-half inches, thickness two inches, width of central groove half an inch, depth of groove one-eighth of an inch. It is composed, as far as could be ascertained

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without chipping it, of whinstone, and weighs two pounds. Mr. Owen's son, Mr. Richard Owen, saw it knocking about at the smithy in the village of Dwyran, and being struck with its appearance asked for it, carrying it home with him. Unfortunately no inquiry was made at the time as to its history, and the blacksmith having since then died, there are now no means of ascertaining the exact place where it was found; still there can be very little doubt but that it came from the closely adjoining land of Treana or Maen Hir where extensive remains of a Roman-British settlement have been traced (see Archæologia Cambrensis, vol. ix, p. 278, 3rd series), having probably been picked up in clearing away the foundations of "Cytiau," or other buildings. For the sake of comparison I give a drawing (No. 2) of another implement, of the same type, but more rounded in shape, three and three-quarter inches in length and having a circumference, a little outside the groove, of eight and a-half inches; it is of coarse grit, weighs one and a-half pounds, and was found in the adjoining parish of Llanidan at Tan Ben y Cevn, where coins, pottery, and many stone articles have been discovered (see Archæologia Cambrensis, new series, vol. iii, p. 209). There is no instance of so highly ornamented a stone of this type to be met with either in the Blackmore Museum or in that of the Royal Irish Academy. One somewhat like No. 2, but more globular, and having the groove round the long axis, is figured in the "Catalogue of the Antiquities of Stone, Earthen, and Vegetable Materials" in the museum of the latter (p. 95, fig. 77, No. 32), where it is classed with weights for nets or fishing lines," but there is added the remark "while these three" (the two others are perforated) "stones would form useful sink stones, we have no direct authority bearing upon the subject; and it has been conjectured that the stone represented by fig. 77 was one of the "flail stones" attached by a thong to a stick, used in early Irish warfare, and to which some allusion is made in the account of the feats of the Ul