Cr.ACIAL MAN. — SKERTCHLY. 147 



Magdalenian Age ; but this ruddy tool, sharp ahnost as the 

 day it was wrought, would puzzle them. I never saw one 

 like it, and I Icnow why ; it happened to be a bit of " floor- 

 stone" of good texture, but with what we knappers call a 

 " wring" in it : it wouldn't, couldn't flake straight ; the 

 flakes would take on a curve, and so it has an indi\aduality, 

 it is a type unto itself. I found it in tough clay (hence the 

 sharpness of its edges) near West Stow in the only hearth 

 of this date I ever came across. It was associated -with 

 quantities of broken, pounded-up bones. I think its maker 

 fashioned it sitting by the camp-fire into which it accidentally 

 fell, which accoimts for its burnt, red hue, and partly for its 

 sharpness, for it has hardly been used. 



" Now," said the type-founders, " riddle me this riddle. 

 How can these four distinct tj^pes come out of beds of the 

 same age ? " Well that was no business of mine : I was 

 satisfied they did. Still I proffered two explanations, either 

 or both of which maj^ be true. First, I couldn't picture a race 

 all of whose members were equally sldlful handicraftsmen, and 

 moreover with only a single idea in their capacious brain-cases. 

 There must have been clumsy boys and clever boys ; and 

 surely they had more than one use for tools — big, simple 

 implements for rough work, more delicate ones for fancy 

 work. You can buy a half-crown Waterbury and a hundred- 

 guinea English lever in the same shop ; and in the Outer 

 Hebrides James Geikie and I watched a fine old grandmother 

 at her spinning wheel in a cot of neolitliic architecture and 

 furnishing, while her bonny grand-daughter, a real Princess 

 of Thule, sat using a Singer sewing-machine. 



Types had no charm for me then. We had too few 

 specimens to found classifications upon. Classifications are 

 apt to be rather the needs of the museum than the necessities 

 of history ; sometimes the classification is more curious than 

 the curiosity it labels. Hear what comfortable words a wise 

 man utters in the year of grace one thousand nine hundred and 

 eleven : " The value of stone implements in deciding upon 

 the age of deposits (whether in caves or elsewhere) depends 

 upon the intimacy of the relation existing between various 

 forms of implement and strata of different age. How close 

 that intimacy really is, has been debated often and at great 

 length. Opinions are still at variance in regard to details, but 

 as to certain main points, no doubt remains." I might quote 



