134 



EELIQUI.E AQUITAJSTIOE. 



Firj. 52. 



Flint Piercer from 

 La Madelaine. 



small furrowed slabs of this sandstone, which have served for the same purpose : 

 these are from the Caves of Dordogne. As for the more polished and shining 

 surface observable in some of the better-made specimens of Needles from the 

 Dordogne Caves, it has been produced by friction, but probably with the aid of 

 some fine sand or hard powder, such as is used for the like purpose at present in 

 this kind of work. 



The " eye," or hole for threading, in these Prehistoric Bone Needles has been 

 usually hollowed out by the workman boring alternately, first on one side and 

 then on the other, with a tool used as a drill. 



In the attempts we have made to get a clear notion of the processes by which, 

 in the absence of every kind of metal, the Aborigines of Pe"rigord were able to 

 manufacture such delicate implements, we have been 

 tolerably successful in preparing, by the employment 

 simply of flint flakes, the little rods of bone sufficiently 

 thin to be fashioned as needles, and in scraping them 

 with a splinter of flint to make them cylindrical and 

 pointed; but when we tried to bore the hole for the 

 "eye" in the thicker end, with some of the fine-pointed 

 simple flint flakes so frequent in the Caves where such 

 stone chips were abundantly made, the points always broke 

 off at the first turn of the hand in the attempt. Luckily 

 we had collected some rare specimens of flint flakes, one 

 end of which, worked into little facets, somewhat like cer- 

 tain diamonds, terminated in an obtuse point ; and by 

 means of these shaped flakes, or little piercers, applied 

 alternately to the two faces of the somewhat flattened 

 head of the bone needle, and worked by a simple turn of 



the hand, we have made in fifteen minutes a perforation or "eye" exactly like 

 those of the old needles of the Caves. Fitted to the end of a turner's or a lock- 

 smith's drill, one of these old piercers produced the same result in two or three 

 minutes. 



It is conceivable that the Cave-folk here had resort to some mechanical 

 appliance in making their tools, and particularly their sewing-needles ; for when 

 these were unfit for use, from the breaking of the eye, they had ready means of 

 making another perforation below the place of the first, as clearly seen in B. Plate 

 XVII. fig. 16, in which the rough fracture of the thick end of the needle shows 

 the trace of a former hole, below which the existing " eye " has been pierced. 



