862 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1«97. 



factnred flints sold at about $1 a tliousaud. The price the author 

 paid for strilve-a-ligbts in Bologna was 1 cent apiece. In Paris the 

 tiiut was arranged with steel and cotton soaked in some chemical, 

 possibly saUpeter or chloride of potash, for tinder, the complete article 

 costing 00 cents (fig. 58). The gunfliiits of commerce were divided into 

 23 classes, according to size and shape as they were required for differ- 

 ent arms. In tlie palmy days of the flint makers they were packed 

 for export in half barrels, each containing U,OUO nnisket, 3,000 car- 

 bine, or 4,000 pistol flints, the weight of each being about the same, C5 

 to 70 ])oiinds. Their manufacture required some skill and handicraft, 

 although it is soon accpiired. There is great difierencc reported in the 

 rapidity of the workmen. 



The working of the Brandon Hint mines bas continued into modern 

 times for the manufacture of gunHints. The i)rocess of nmking them 

 has been described at length in various works.' It will be sufficiently 



I 



understood by Plates 8-10, which show the princii)al operations. Sir 

 John Evans says skilled workmen at Brandon could make from 10,000 

 to 18,000 a week, and that the average weekly output was from 200,000 

 to 250,000 for 20 men. In Ilees's Encyclopedia,- it is estimated that one 

 a minute was the average for a good Avorkman. That would make the 

 extreme weekly ])roduct of 20 men but 72,000. 



The U. S. National Museum possesses a series of nodules, crudely 

 and partly worked, from Brandon, showing the entire operation. 



The Grrimes Graves quarry was investigated by Canon (Jreenwell, of 

 Durham Cathedral, in 1870, and bis report is published in the Transac- 

 tions of the Ethnological Society for that year (p. 419). 



The (puirry covered about 20 acres and consisted of shafts or pits 

 partly tilled, now formi^ig funnel-like depressions, 254 in number, 20 to 

 GO feet in diameter, dispersed over the surface but sometimes so close 

 together as to break into one another. It required much work to 

 reexcavate them. The shafts or pits chosen by him were about 30 



' Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, p. 18; Stevens, Flint Chips, p. 578; Rees's 

 Ency<'loi>e(li;i, article "Gunfiints," .hkI Skeitchly, Manufacture of GunHints. 

 -Article "Guulliuta." 



