86 ANCIENT WORKINGS FOE FLINT. 



sank their shafts down past the layer of " wall-stone," which 

 occurs at a depth of 19 J feet, to the gun-flint layer, which at 

 the spot in question is 39 feet deep, although about a mile to 

 the S.W., where it is now worked, it is much nearer the 

 surface. 



At present the workmen excavate the chalk both above 

 and below the layer of flint ; but in the old galleries, perhaps 

 from the greater difficulty of raising the material, the chalk 

 below the flint bed was in no case removed. The implements 

 used in making these excavations were deer's horns; the brow 

 tine being used as a pick, and the others removed. Thus 

 treated, a deer's horn closely resembles in form a modern 

 pick, but of course it is subject to rapid wear by use, which 

 accounts for the large numbers of worn-out implements found 

 by Mr. Greenwell among the rubbish. 



In one case the roof of a passage had given way. On 

 removing the chalk which had fallen in, the end of the gallery 

 came in view. The flint had been hollowed out in three places, 

 and in front of two of these recesses, pointing towards the 

 half - excavated stone, were two deer-horn picks, lying just 

 as they had been left, still coated with chalk dust, on which 

 was in one place plainly visible the print of the workman's 

 hand. The tools had evidently been left at the close of a 

 day's work ; during the night the gallery had fallen in, and 

 they had never been recovered. 



"It was a most impressive sight," says Mr. Greenwell, 

 " and one never to be forgotten, to look, after a lapse, it may 

 be, of 3000 years, upon a piece of work unfinished, with the 

 tools of the workmen still lying where they had been placed 

 so many centuries ago." 



Similar shafts and chambers have been excavated and 

 described by Col. Lane Fox,* now General Pitt Rivers, in and 

 round Cissbury Camp, near Worthing. In these excavations 

 * Journ. Anthr. Inst. vol. viii. p. 357. 



