By William Long, Esq. 117 



granite, with a flint chisel and a wooden mallet. In the Edinburgh 

 Antiquarian Museum there is a block of grey Aberdeen granite from 

 Kintore : it is one of the ancient sculptured stones of Scotland, and 

 has upon one side two crescents, &c. On the back of this hard 

 granite Mr. Robert Paul, the door-keeper of the museum, tried, at 

 Sir James Simpson's request, the experiment alluded to, and cut in 

 two hours two-thirds of a circle, with a flint and a wooden mallet. 

 The flint used was about three inches in length, an inch in breadth, 

 and about a quarter of an inch in thickness. The circle which was 

 sculptured with it in the granite is seven inches in diameter, and the 

 incision itself is nearly three quarters of an inch in breadth, about a 

 quarter of an inch in depth, and very smooth on its cut surface. In 

 sculpturing the circle, the sharp tips of the flint tool from time to 

 time broke ofi", but another sharp edge was always immediately ob- 

 tained by merely turning the flint round. This experiment shows 

 conclusively that such scidptures might have been produced during 

 the Stone Age," and also that, even without metal, all that was done 

 to the sarsen and other stones at Stonehenge might have been effected 

 by flint alone. ^ Dr. Thumam was of opinion, that, in making the 

 mortises and tenons, the stones, after certain chippings had been 

 made, had been i-ubbed into form by means of stone muUers, with 

 sand and water.* 



If we may judge from the feet of the fallen trilithons, the part to 

 be imbedded in the ground was, in some instances, by chipping made 

 smaller and narrower than the part to stand above ground j and it 

 would appear from the statement contained in the following cutting 

 from a Salisbury newspaper of October 3rd, 1863, attested by Mr. 



' Though himdreds of beautiful stone axes and ornaments have been found 

 in tbe Britanny tumuli, no weapons of metal have yet occured in them. It has 

 been supposed that the carvings on some of the stones could not have been cut 

 without metal. Actual experiments, however, as Messrs. Bertrand and de 

 Mortillet have shown me, prove that the stone can be cut with flint, while 

 bronze produces no efi'ect on it." — Sir J. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 110, 

 second edition. 



-The irregular form and size of these mortises and tenons justify the conjec- 

 ture of William Smith, the geologist, that these had been formed by friction 

 with stones and sand." — Crania Btitannica. 



