NOTES ON A BONE OBJECT. 87
There is another bone in the Guildhall Museum which has
a series of scooped cuts (fig. 7), but this object is, I think,
clearly of a different character from the specimens enumerated
above. The cuts in this case are shallow and do not penetrate
to the hollow of the bone, while it seems fairly certain
that this bone had been adapted as a handle of some implement,
and the cuts were merely to afford a better grip for the hand.
The explanation as to the use of the Braintree object as a
"cattle call," or musical instrument, which
was advanced by Rev. J. W. Kenworthy
when he presented the object to the Club, and
which received some support when the
Braintree specimen was first exhibited, will
now be seen, by the comparison of the series,
to be quite untenable.
Considered alone, the cut on the Brain-
tree implement has some resemblance to a
mouthpiece, suggesting those of the trumpets
of the Bronze age (fig. 8), or the horns of
Central and West Africa, made of elephant
tusks (fig. 9).
The neatly drilled holes also suggest the
stops of a flute or whistle, or the pierced
cylindrical objects known as bone hinges,
such as are to be seen on the specimens in
the Guildhall Museum (fig. 10, a and b).
These holes, when forming stops, are pierced
only through one surface of the hollow bone,
while in all the cases of the class of object

of the Braintree type, when they occur, they
are carried right through the bone.
Fig. 7.—bone handle
found at london
wall (guildhall
MUSEUM).
The cut in the Colchester example is,
moreover, quite unsuited as a mouthpiece, while the occur-
rence, in some instances, of more than one of these cuts, as well
as the absence of the holes in other specimens, make it quite
certain that these objects were not sound-producing implements.
At the suggestion of Mr. William Cole, photographs of the
Braintree specimen were sent to the Rev. F. W. Galpin, the
well-known authority on primitive musical instruments, and he
at once rejected the idea of this object having served any such