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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



always the work of man. To make one, the flint must he held firmly, 

 and then a considerable force must he applied, either by pressure or hy 

 blows, repeated three or four times, but at least three, and given in 

 certain slightly different directions, with a certain definite force; these 

 conditions could scarcely occur by accident, so that, simple as it may 

 seem to the untrained eye, a flint flake is to the antiquary as sure a 

 trace of man as the footprint in the sand was to Robinson Crusoe. 



To us, accustomed as we are to the use of metals, it seems difficult 

 to believe that such things were ever made use of; we know, however, 

 that many savages of the present day have no better tools. Yet, with 

 axes such as these, and generally with the assistance of fire, they will 

 cut down large trees, and hollow them out into canoes. The piles used 

 in the Swiss Stone Age Lake habitations were evidently, from the 

 mai'ks of the cuts on them, prepared with the help of stone axes. The 

 great similarity of arrow-heads, even from the most distant localities, 

 may be seen in the accompanying figures, which represent specimens 

 from France, North America, and Tierra del Fuego, respectively. 



France. 





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Tierra del Fuego. 



North America. 



Of monuments and tumuli belonging to this epoch, there is no lack ; 

 throughout the world, they are scattered camps, dikes, fortifications, 

 cromlechs, or stone circles. In the Orkneys, more than 2,000 of the 

 smaller tumuli still remain. In Denmark, they are still more abundant. 

 They are found all over Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to the 

 Ural Mountains ; in Asia, they are scattered over the great steppes, 

 from the borders of Russia to the Pacific Ocean, and from the plains 

 of Siberia to those of Hindostan ; the entire plain of Jelalabad, says 

 Masson, " is literally covered with tumuli and mounds." In America, 

 they are to be numbered by thousands and tens of thousands ; nor are 



