IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 171 



back to the time whon the valleys wliich now exist were not 

 excavated to anything like their present depth, and when various 

 animals now extinct inhabited this country. 



The ordinary forms of implements which characterize the 

 Neolithic Period are celts (a kind of hatchet), picks, chisels, 

 gouges (rare in Britain), hammers, hammer- stones of various 

 kinds, grinding-stones, flakes, cores, scrapers (with a rounded or 

 a semicircular edge), borers, knives, javelins, arrow-heads, and 

 perforated axes. Personal ornaments also occur, such as buttons 

 or studs, beads, rings, armlets, and necklaces. 



The manner in which some of these articles were manufactured 

 may first be considered. To make a flint implement, such as a 

 small flint knife with two sharp edges to it, would at first sight 

 not appear to be an easy thing to do ; but the manufacture of such 

 flint implements is still carried on in this country, at Icklingham 

 in Suffolk, and at Brandon on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 at both of which places I have seen the process of making gun- 

 flints. At Brandon some twenty or thirty workmen are employed, 

 producing from 200,000 to 300,000 gun-flints per week. The 

 flint-blocks used in the manufacture are there obtained by sinking 

 small shafts into the ground until one of the bands of flints 

 occurring in the Upper Chalk is met with which contains flints 

 of the right quality ; and along this band low horizontal galleries 

 are then worked, and the large flints extracted. 



The same method was followed not far from the same spot by 

 the ancient flint- workers of the Neolithic Age, At Grime's 

 Graves, near Brandon, in Norfolk, the whole surface of the 

 ground is studded with pits which were evidently made at that 

 remote period for the pui-pose of extracting flints from the chalk. 

 One of these pits was explored by Canon Greenwell, the well- 

 known barrow-digger, and it was found that after passing through 

 a layer of flints of inferior quality, the very layer from which 

 gun-flints arc manufactured at the present day, known as the 

 "floor-stone," was met with, and that along it horizontal galleries 

 had been driven, the excavations having been made by means of 

 picks formed fi'om the antlers of the red deer. Similar pits have 

 also been explored at Cissbury, near Worthing, in Sussex ; and at 

 Spiennes, near Mons, in Belgium. 



The process of making a sharp-edged flint flake or knife 

 with two sharp edges is really easy. A large piece of flint 

 is first broken across so as to give it a flat surface ; a blow 

 is then given near the margin of the flint with a spherical- 

 ended hammer (which may be of iron or merely a large pebble) 



