PALEOLITHIC DBXTEEITY. 127 



cesses, including the detarhineut ol'the flake from the rough Hint nodule, and trimming 

 it roughly into the required form, preparatory to the delicate manipulation of edging, 

 pointing, and notching the arrow-head. The thinning of the flint-blade is effected by 

 detaching long thin scales or flakes from the surface by using the flaker like a chisel and 

 striking it a succession of blows with a hammer-stone. The marks of this delicate surface- 

 flaking are abundantly manifest on the highly-finished Danish knives, daggers, and large 

 spear-heads, as well as upon most other flint implements of Europe's Neolithic Age. The 

 large spear and tongue-shaped implements of the drift are, on the contrary, rudely 

 chipped, evidently by the blows of a hammer-stone ; although some of the more delicately 

 fashioned drift implements seem to indicate that the use of the flint or bone flaker was not 

 unknown to the men of the Pahieolithic Age. But the chipping-stone or hammer was in 

 constant use at the later period ; and the small hammer-stone, with indentations on its sides 

 for the finger and thumb, and its rounded edges marked with the evidence of long use in 

 chipiug the flint nodules into the desired forms, abounds both in Europe and America, 

 wherever the arrow-maker has carried on his primitive art. The implements in use varied 

 with the available material. A T-shaped wooden flaker srifficed for the Aztecs in shaping 

 the easily worked obsidian. The jasper, chalcedony, and cjuartz, in like manner, yields 

 readily to the pressure of a slender flaker of horn ; whereas Mr. Cushing notes that the 

 " tough horn-stone of "Western Arctic America could not be flaked by pressure in the hand, 

 but must be rested against some solid substance, and flaked by means of an instrument, 

 the handle of which fltted the palm like that of an umbrella, enabling the operator to 

 exert a pressure against the substance to be chipped nearly equal to the weight of the 

 body." One result of Mr. Cushing's experiments in arrow-making was to satisfy him that 

 the greatest difficulty was to make long narrow surface-flakes. Hence, contrary to all 

 preconceived ideas, it is easier to form the much-prized delicately-finished small arrow- 

 head, with barbs and stem, than larger and seemingly ruder implements which involve 

 much surface-flaking. 



It is interesting to learn of the recovery of this lost art of the ancient arrow-makers by 

 a series of tentative expeiiments independently pursued by different observers. Before 

 Mr. Cushing's attention had been directed to any of the descriptions of the process of 

 modern flint-workers, now familiar to us, he aimed at placing himself in the same condi- 

 tions as the primitive manufacturer of Europe's Stone Age, or of the ancient Mound 

 Builders of this Continent, devoid of metallic tools, and with the Hint, obsidian, jasper, 

 or horustone, as the most available material out of which to fashion nearly all needful 

 implements. He set to work accordingly with no other appliances than such sticks, 

 and variously shaped stones, as coiild be found on the banks of the streams where he 

 sought his materials. The results realize to lis, in a highly interesting way, the earliest 

 stages in the training of the self-taught workman of the Palœolithic Age. After making 

 various im^îlements akin to the most rudely fashioned examples from the river-drift or 

 the old flint pits, by means of chipping one flint or stone with another, he satisfied him- 

 self that no amount of chipping, however carefully practised, would produce surfaces like 

 the best of those which he was trying to imitate. He accordingly assumed that there 

 must be some other process unknown to him. By chance he tried pressure with the 

 point of a stick, instead of chipping with a stone, and the mystery was solved. He had 

 hit on nearly the same method already described as in use by Aztecs, Eskimos and 



