356 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



This period has been divided according to progress in liuman culture, 

 and divers names have been given thereto, following the taste of the 

 writers or discoverers. M. Lartet named the epochs after the animals 

 associated with the implements and called them, respectively, the 

 epochs of the Cave Bear, the Mammoth, and the Reindeer. M. Dupont, 

 of Belgium, divided it into only two, and named the epochs after the 

 Mammoth and the Reindeer. M. de Mortillet has divided it into five 

 epochs, and has named them, respectively, the Chelleeu, after the station 

 of Chelles, a few miles east of Paris; the Acheuleen, after St. Acheul 

 on the river Somme; the Mousterien, after the caverns of Moustier on 

 the river Vezere, Dordogne; the Solutreen, after the rock shelter of 

 Solutrc near Macon; and the Madelainien, after the rock shelter of La 

 Madelaine, Dordogne. 



In later days the tendency seems to be to divide them otherwise. 

 M. Cartailhac and M. Reinach, following Sir John Evans, are in favor 

 of the first period being called the alluvium, and the second the cavern. 

 All authorities are, however, unanimous in their agreement that this 

 period and all these epochs, whatever they are to be called, belong 

 to the Quaternary geologic iDcriod; that they were earlier than the 



rated by a chisel or other instrument in hewing. (2) A fragment or piece broken off; 

 a small piece. 



"Chip, V. t. To cut into small pieces or chips, to diminish by cutting away a little 

 at a time, or iu small pieces. 



"Chip, V. i. To break or fly off in small pieces." 



The Standard Dictionary says: 



"Chip, n. 1. A small piece cut or broken off. (1) A small thin or flattish piece of 

 wood or stone cut or chopped out. (2) A small fragment with at least one feather- 

 edge, broken off from any hard or brittle body; spall." 



According to the author's opinion, the definitions and differences are as follows: 



A flake is that object which, of flint, is struck always by a blow, from a core or 

 nucleus in large and usually long and thin pieces. The process by which this is 

 made may be called "flaking." It is, or ought to be, confined to the single blow by 

 which the flake is stricken off. 



Chipping comprises all other methods of striking off pieces of flint. It may be 

 used for preparing the nucleus, or for transforming the flake or other material or 

 object into the implement desired. 



The fine handiwork done on many, and, indeed, most, of the flint imjilements 

 described in this paper, has been done by cliipping and can not be regarded in any 

 proper sense as that of flaking. The infinitesimal chilis by which the deep notches, 

 the fine points, the serrated edges, of spear and arrow-heads, by which the herring- 

 bone handles of Scandinavian daggers and the broad and thin leaf-shaped imple- 

 ments are and have been made, and indeed by which all finely finished and delicately 

 worked flint implements have been brought to their present condition, can not, with 

 any degree of propriety, be called flaking, but should be called chipping. The 

 pieces striken from these oljjects by the processes to which they have been submitted 

 can not, without violence to the sense, be called flakes. It appears to the author 

 much more proper to call them chips. 



He is well awiire that the implement of beaver's tooth used by the Eskimo has 

 been called "the llaker," but this was only the determination or name given by its 

 discoverer and has no other value than that of his ox>inion. The pieces pressed oft" 

 with this implement are chips, and not flakes. 



