138 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND. 



But everyone thought these things were post-glacial, and 

 the orthodox ghost of good Bishop Ussher was not perturbed. 



BRANDON. 

 I chose Brandon for my headquarters for anthropological 

 reasons ; it was the centre of an area brimmed to overflow in 

 stepping-stones of our dead selves, from tumuU where bronze 

 fibula lay cheek by jowl with flint arrow-head and polished 

 celt, to old mines wherein the early loiapper had quarried black 

 flint with deer-horn pick ; and the gravels of the river-banks 

 were deposit-bankb of palseolithic riches. Moreover it was the 

 only surviving seat of the gun-fhnt makers, who still send these 

 quaint survivals, weekly, by tens of thousands, to the Arctic 

 A^ilds of Siberia and Russia and the Hudson's Bay Territorj^ 

 for the fur-hunters whose Avarmly gloved fingers could not 

 manipulate the tiny percussion cap. Canon Grenwell had 

 opened a few of the ancient fhnt-mines at Grime's Graves, and 

 in a fine jjaper had dropped the seed of a pregnant idea that 

 the modem gun-fhnt industry might be the lineal descendant 

 of the neolithic fhnt trade. 



I received official permission to devote as much time as 

 was needed to work out the story of this djdng industry. 



I became a flint-knapper and my sihceous education as a 

 workman was complete. I became partner in a gun-flint shop 

 and fhnt mine. The result was I was able to prove that the 

 gun-flint trade was the oldest in Europe, with continuity from 

 then backwards at least to neolithic times, for I learn that since 

 my time it has been thought the Grime's Graves pits are late 

 palseohthic. I showed that all the knapper's tools were but 

 iron and steel replicas of the stone and bone implements of 

 eld : that even some of the words of the lost language were in 

 daily use, and that the knapper himself belonged to the neolithic 

 type ; not only his tools but his body was age-old. 



Meanwhile mapping went on, and I very soon became 

 convinced that the palseolithic implements I found in plenty 

 were not all of the same age, that some indeed were derived 

 from older deposits, as you may get Coralline Cragshells in 

 the Red Crag. 



James Geikie had thrown out the bold suggestion that the 

 river-gravels with palaeolithic implements pertained to glacial 

 times : his argument being that their northern limit coincided 

 pretty closely with the southern limit of the later boulder- 



