118 



THEIR FORMS AND GREAT NUMBERS. 



from a pit which I caused to be dug at Abbeville, in sand in 

 contact with the chalk, and below certain fluvio-marine beds, 

 which will be alluded to in the next chapter. 



Fig. 14. 



Flint knife or flake from below the sand containing Cyrena fluminalis, 

 Menchecourt, Abbeville. 



d Transverse section along the line of fracture, b, c. 

 Size, two-thirds of the original. 



Between the spear-head and oval shapes, there are various 

 intermediate gradations, and there are also a vast variety 

 of very rude implements, many of which ma}- have been 

 rejected as failures, and others struck off as chips in the 

 course of manufacturing the more perfect ones. Some of 

 these chips can only be recognized by an experienced eye as 

 bearing marks of human workmanship. 



It has often been asked, how, without the use of metallic 

 hammers, so many of these oval and spear-headed tools could 

 have been wrought into so uniform a shape. Mr. Evans, in 

 order experimentally to illustrate the process, constructed a 

 stone hammer, by mounting a pebble in a wooden handle, 

 and with this tool struck off flakes from the edge on both 

 sides of a chalk flint, till it acquired precisely the same shape 

 as the oval tool, fig. 9, p. 115. 



If I were invited to estimate the probable number of the 

 more perfect tools found in the valley of the Somme since 

 1842, rejecting all the knives, and all that might be suspected 

 of being spurious or forged, I should conjecture that they 

 far exceeded a thousand. Yet it would be a great mistake 

 to imagine that an antiquary or geologist, who should devote 

 a few weeks to the exploration of such a valley as that of the 



