106 



KNOWLEDGE. 



April, 1915. 



without any diffusion, whilst the stars would be 

 visible during both day and night ; and no gloriously 

 tinU'il sunrise or sunset for the poet or man of 

 science to contemplate. On the other hand, no 

 smoky towns, no dusty highways or furniture, and 

 no fog. Bui which dusts cause the aesthetic results ? 

 Chiefly the volcanic and cosmic — those winch we 



cannot help. And which dust is it which causes 

 ns so much annoyance, and which is so familiar? 

 That which wc can help, by altering our roads, our 

 locomotion, our domestic fires, and our factories. 

 However, such is the progress of civilisation, and 

 truly " God made the country, and man made the 

 town." 



THE MAKING OF GUN FLINTS. 



By WILFRED MARK WEBB, F.L.S. 



li is interesting at the present time, when the 

 manufacture of cartridges and shells is of the utmost 

 importance to the nation, to remember that the 

 production of gun-flints still goes quietly on. 

 Thousands arc exported every year, particularly 

 to tropical countries, where more primitive methods 

 linger, or are found to be more convenient ; or, 

 again, where the British Government sees to it 

 that modern firearms do not get into the hands of 

 the natives. 



There -reins little doubt but that the maker of 

 gun-flints, or the flint-knapper, as he is called, is 

 carrying on an industry which has continued un- 

 broken from very early prehistoric times, when man 

 first began to fashion implements of stone. It 

 would appear, nevertheless, at first sight that 

 there is a fallacy somewhere, and that there must 

 have been a very long gap between the dying out 

 of the flint arrowhead and the invention of the 

 flint-lock musket. 



This is true ; but it must be remembered that 

 the flint in the guns was put there to produce 

 sparks, and was only an adaptation of the strike-a- 

 lights which all through the ages, and even within 

 the memory of many persons still alive, have been 

 used for the purpose of obtaining fire. 



There is, indeed, a considerable family likeness 

 between the flints made for the tinder-box and 

 the prehistoric flint implements which are known 

 as " scrapers " (see Figures 82 and 90). 



The work of flint-knapping as it is carried on at 

 Brandon, in Suffolk, is briefly this. The flints are 

 taken out of pits, as surface material is refractory 

 and of little use. The picks used, though now made 

 of iron, show by their shape (see Figure 80) that 

 they have been modelled upon the primitive deer- 

 antler picks which have been found in prehistoric 

 workings. Figure 83 shows the breaking up of the 

 large flints with a heavy hammer into convenient 

 sizes, a process which is called " quartering" (see 

 Figure 8-1). From the lumps thus made flakes 

 are struck off with a lighter hammer, which are in 

 every way comparable to the flakes struck off by 

 prehistoric man from one stone with another. 



It will be seen by looking at the core represented 

 in Figure 85 that it is possible to produce a flake 

 with one ridge running down the middle and two 



sharp edges, or by removing the whole of one facet 

 and part of the two on either side a flat flake with 

 two sharp edges may be obtained. Several of the 

 latter arc shown in Figure 81. In the one of the 

 extreme left hand of the picture the under side of 

 the flake is seen, with the bulb of percussion at the 

 top. This is caused by the blow, and is familiar 

 enough in prehistoric flakes. The second specimen 

 shows the old facet, and the third is a flake which 

 has been cut up with the knapping hammer. 



A knapper at work is shown in Figure 88, while 

 an enlarged illustration, to show details of this 

 important part of the work, is given in Figure 86. 

 The knapper holds the flake on the top of a wedge- 

 shaped piece of iron, driven into a block. In front 

 of the iron is a piece of leather, over which the 

 knapping hammer is held. This is a very light 

 tool, nowadays made, as a rule, from an old file, 

 and has thin, square ends. With this hammer it 

 is possible to cut the flake into pieces to form the 

 gun-flints, which are afterwards trimmed round 

 with a few dexterous blows. 



To the student of flint implements, who is 

 astounded sometimes to see the minuteness of the 

 flakes which have been removed from the edges of 

 a flint knife or arrowhead, and wonders how the 

 work was done, it may be pointed out that one 

 blow of the knapping hammer may make dozens 

 of these ; and it is safe to surmise that the pre- 

 historic artificer was no less clever than his modern 

 representative, and much of the beauty of finish was 

 obtained by a few well-directed blows, and not by 

 much laborious chipping. 



According to the sizes of the flakes, gun-flints 

 of various dimensions can be produced. The largest 

 are for cannon flints, and one of these is seen in 

 Figure 87, which also depicts gun, musket, carbine, 

 and pistol flints. 



The photographs from which our illustrations 

 were made were obtained at the works of Mr. Fred 

 Snare at Brandon. Gun-flints are also made in 

 France, and these, as a rule, have one end rounded. 

 Mr. Snare also makes strike-a-lights, for flint and 

 steel are still used instead of matches in some parts 

 of the world, and it may be remembered that during 

 the Boer War many tinder-boxes were sent out to 

 our soldiers in South Africa. 



