Knapping Flints 67 



at which I practised had to be well out on the green 

 willow twigs ere I fired ; and secondly, as flints were 

 difficult to obtain, I had all a boy's patience and 

 ingenuity in exposing first one edge to the hammer, 

 then another. Moreover, the number of miss-fires 

 would have exhausted the patience of any man shoot- 

 ing for his life or his dinner. After thirty or forty 

 shots, however, it is probable that a gun-flint is no 

 longer to be depended upon. 



On being split up, the flint occasionally shows an 

 unexpected colour, and, indeed, the figures shown in 

 this process, though they must have been accidentally 

 produced, are sometimes marvellous. There is one in 

 the possession of a workman now in which a mother 

 suckling her child is shown with a fidelity and dis- 

 tinctness no draughtsman could surpass. But the 

 knapper does not regard these colours with the eyes 

 of an aesthete. He knows that those who barter the 

 flints with the natives find that the pure black are 

 invariably the most highly prized, and accordingly he 

 has to accept a very much smaller price for those of a 

 grey tint. Many of these are probably made into strike- 

 a-lights and never used for guns at all. Yet, when all 

 is said, the number of gun-flints made is sufficiently 

 large to surprise the new generation of English sports- 

 men, who are growing up unfamiliar with any but 

 breech-loading guns. 



Perhaps I may be allowed to conclude this paper 

 with the narration of a little incident that made me 



F 2 



