444 Prehistoric Period. 



These marks the "bulb" and the " bulb -hollow "are the 

 rudimentary signs of human work, and the beginner should learn to 

 detect these and be content at first to collect and examine flakes 

 rather than expect to find arrow heads and polished celts. 



Rarely indeed do agencies other than human imitate these 

 signs frost and moving water act quite differently. The rolling 

 and jostling of the pebbles on a sea-beach and of the gravel of a 

 flowing stream may be taken as instances. 



But flakes as evidence of man's handiwork are not without 

 corroborative indications. Their position with reference to the 

 present surface of the soil, the association with finished implements, 

 with the bones of animals and shells of edible molluscs often put 

 the antiquity of a simple flake beyond doubt. 



It should be remembered that the making of gun-flints and 

 flints for the tinder-box and the shaping of flint blocks for building 

 produce similar flakes, which are found at times strewn about on 

 or near the surface. It could truly be said of such that they are of 

 human origin, but that they are of great antiquity is sufficiently 

 disproved by other criteria. 



POLISH, and the surface alteration misleadingly called " bleach- 

 ing," are the principal tests of age. The former is a result of friction 

 due to gentle movements of the soil-cap continued through ages, 

 and the latter ensues from the solvent action of rain and carbonic 

 acid through long periods. 



The choicer flakes were subjected by the ancient artificer to a 

 further treatment described as secondary working. By use of a 

 bone or a peg-shaped flint a fabricator pressure along the sharp 

 margins would nip off tiny chips, and the flake would be so reduced 

 as to be used for the smaller kinds of implements scrapers, knives, 

 saws and arrowheads. 



Flint " knapping " is still practised at Brandon, in Norfolk, and 

 the technique of the flint worker may even now be studied. True, 

 the only forms there produced are for the furnishing of flint-locks 

 and tinder-boxes, but this involves the same manner of work as 

 " man before metals " employed. 



The stone age is, in this country, classified according to three 

 well marked stages, which do not appear to be continuous, described 

 as the Eolithic, Palaeolithic, and Neolithic periods. Elsewhere, as 

 in the French cave deposits, the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods 

 seem to show continuity ; but the correlation between the French 

 and English stages is not clear. 



