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The small tools, termed borers, require little description. 
In the majority of instances they are flakes chipped to a sharp 
point to serve as boring or piercing instruments. In regarding 
these, the ordinary observer may feel rather sceptical as to their 
boring or piercing capabilities; but experiment proves they 
admirably answer the purpose of boring holes in wood or bone. 
This I successfully demonstrated to some sceptical friends by 
boring a perfectly circular hole with one of these rude tools 
through the handle of a hat brush. ‘The discovery of these 
borers in connection with the flint axes is a rare occurrence, 
and but few have hitherto rewarded my many rambles over the 
Downs. 
With the exception of the flint axes, the tools described above 
are not such as could have been well employed as weapons of 
offence or defence. They evidently served more pacific purposes 
in the dorrestic phase of primitive man’s life ; and, we may 
depend, they played an important part in the preparation of 
animal hides as clothing, the covering of their huts or tents, &c. 
Of the existence of habitations on these productive sites there is 
an entire lack of evidence ; but, that food was cooked or water 
boiled on these spots, there is a profusion of proof existing in the 
enormous quantities of what are known as ‘‘pot-boilers,” or 
cooking stones. From the examples exhibited you will perceive 
they are approximately round flints, of varying sizes, and that they 
differ in colour from ordinary flints, as well as in the multitude of 
cracks which extend through them in every direction. This 
greyish tint and cracked appearance can only be reproduced in 
one way, namely, by heating flints to a high temperature, either 
directly or indirectly, by fire. In the fortified camps of pre- 
historic man these burnt flints occur in thousands; and it is now 
generally recognised among archzologists that they were 
employed in the cooking operations of the prehistoric tribes, 
who, like many savages of recent years, had no pottery or other 
vessels which would stand the heat of the fire. 
The following quotation from Professor Tylor will give you 
a fair idea of this method of stone-boiling as it obtained among 
the savages of North America :— 
‘“There is a North American tribe who received from their 
neighbours, the Ojibwas, the name of Assinaboins, or Stone- 
Boilers, from their mode of boiling their meat, of which Catlin 
gives a particular account. ‘They dig a hole in the ground, take 
a piece of animal’s raw hide, and press it down with their hands 
close to the sides of the hole, which thus becomes a sort of pot 
or basin. ‘This they fill with water, and they make a number of 
stones red-hot in a fire close by. The meat is put into the water, 
and the stones dropped in till the meat is boiled. Catlin 
describes the process as awkward and tedious, and says that, 
since the Assinaboins had learnt from the Mandans to make 
