DESCEIPTIONS OF THE PLATES STONE IMPLEMENTS. [A. XXVI.] 115 



A. PLATE XXVI. 



We have here three long, arched, tapering flint flakes, with unworn edges, 

 that may have served for Scratchers or Poignards. One of them, fig. 3, is a 

 simple flake, of the same character as one, from Cro-Magnon near Les Eyzies, 

 already described, page 86, A. Plate XX. fig. 3. The two others differ from the 

 last in that they have been struck off from blocks of flint which had been dressed 

 so as to present one or more long ridges or corners, brought to an angle, along a 

 convex curve, by coarse chipping at right angles to the ridge-line. A smart blow 

 at one end of a ridge thus prepared, in a direction coincident with the long axis 

 of the dressed block, has detached a ridge-flake, parallel with the curved edge, 

 and therefore arched, triangular in section, blunt at the end where the blow 

 was struck, and tapering to a point at the other end, where the force of the 

 concussion died out between the mass of the block and the outer edge of its long 

 corner or ridge. 



The large flint " cores " found abundantly in the surface-soil near Pressigny-le- 

 Grand, Dep. Indre et Loire, and so well known as " Livres de beurre," have been 

 well described by Mr. John Evans*, E.E/.S., as purposely dressed by lateral 

 chipping to a raised ridge, for the production of long, smooth flakes (9 or 10 

 inches in length), by blows given at the end of the broad ridge along the middle of 

 the " core," in a direction parallel to the long axis of the stone. The specimens, 

 however, here shown by figures 1 and 2 are corner-flakes, that have been struck 

 from blocks designedly dressed with a strongly convex curve, probably for the 

 further production of long, arched, tapering, and smoother flakes (like fig. 3), 

 after the roughly worked surface of the block had been flaked off, the convexity 

 of the surface giving, in the hands of the practised workman, to the flakes 

 successively struck off an arched formt, highly esteemed, it may be, either for 

 practical value or for fancied grace. 



Figs, la and 15. Two views of a long, narrow, arched " corner-flake " (see above) 

 of dull, purplish-drab, subtranslucent flint, with segments of concentric ellip- 

 tical bands, faint and reddish, towards the ends of the flake. The back or 



* ' Archseologia,' vol. xl. ; see also ' Proceedings of the Ethnographical Society,' vol. v. p. 221. 



t This graceful curve of arched knife-flakes was much more easily and perfectly obtained by the Aztecs 

 in working Obsidian, their material for stone implements, in consequence of the more perfect " conchoidal 

 fracture " of the stone. See E. B. Tylor's ' Anahuac,' 1861, pages 96 and 98 &c. 



