STONE IMPLEMENTS OF CEYLON. 119 



In Ceylon, as I said, we have no flint, and the ancient 

 inhabitants were reduced to making use of quartz, crystal, 

 and chert, all of which are found commonly over great part 

 of the Island, but which were almost totally neglected in 

 lands where flint is abundant. Chert in fact was used in 

 parts of Europe where flint was scarce ; but it is, rougher in 

 texture, and breaks with a less clean and sharp edge than 

 flint. Quaitz, though breaking with an extremely sharp edge, 

 is brittle, and difficult to woik on account of its crystalline 

 formation. Last year I submitted specimens of Ceylon chert 

 and crystal to a professional flint-worker of Brandon in 

 Suffolk ; and he found that chert was harder than flint, but 

 flaked fairly well, while with crystal he could do nothing at all. 



It is not therefore to be wondered at that Ceylon implements 

 are in general ruder and less skilfully worked than similar 

 specimens in flint. As for grinding and polishing, no specimen 

 has yet been discovered here which shows any sign of the 

 process. Flint, we know, was polished with sand or sandstone ; 

 quartz is one of the hardest of rocks, and could hardly be 

 ground by anything but corundum or precious stones. Hence 

 all implements in Ceylon must be judged solely by their size, 

 design, and chipping ; and comparing the workmanship with 

 that of European specimens, it is plain that the immense 

 majority which have been found so far are Neolithic, and 

 probably of no very remote date. They comprise scrapers, 

 round and hollow (the commonest of implements everywhere), 

 trimmed flakes for knife-blades, sharp points for boring, 

 hammer stones, and very rare arrow-heads, mostly of simple 

 triangular shape, one of which found by Mr. C. T. Symons is 

 notched, a design rare in Europe, but exceedingly common in 

 America. One bone needle or borer was recovered by me 

 from a cave near Balangoda. Chisels or planes are also 

 fairly plentiful, but nothing resembling an axe has yet been 

 found — an extraordinary omission, when one considers how 

 obvious the design is, and how common in the rest of the 

 world. The great majority of these implements are of quartz, 



