FOR WORKS IN HARD AND SOFT STONE 193
essential, since it is extremely difficult to tell the difference
between its traces and those left by the gouge. The grooves
made by both are hollow concave grooves, while the shape
of the bull-nosed chisel is totally distinct from that of the
gouge. The bull-nosed chisel has a semi-lunar blade that is
quite flat and, as such, it must be classed with the flat chisels.
But the cut it makes is a shallow groove. In many ways it is
the best possible instrument to use when working in hollow
areas of cutting depressions. The only difference between it
and the gouge in working is that it can only make the shallow-
est of grooves and cannot be used continuously to deepen
those grooves, as can the gouge. But a single furrow made
by the bull-nosed chisel is almost indistinguishable from a
single furrow made by the gouge (see Fig. 72). The only
difference is that the bull-nosed chisel seems to require
more strokes of the hammer than the gouge and that the
striations which represent each new hammer-stroke are
more numerous. Further, the striations are, like the edge
of the blade, semi-lunar while the striations made by the
hammer-strokes of the gouge are strictly horizontal. The
difference is perfectly clear from the attached illustration
(Fig. 72) where the two strokes are compared.
One important peculiarity of the gouge-mark that distin-
guishes it from the abraded groove is that the gouge-cut
groove is, in effect, an elongated oval in outline, with the
head of each end of the oval often prolonged into a narrow
tip, thus: _.

The abraded groove, on the other hand, ‘fades out’ at
each end into a surface that blends with the surface which is
cut into, whereas the gouge-cut groove has a perfectly sharp
and well-defined beginning and end. This again is made
clear from the illustration (Fig. 72).
The bull-nosed chisel was in antiquity almost certainly the
tool most usually employed for the cutting of grooves.
Its corners, unlike those of the gouge are not fragile and,
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