174 FOSSIL MEN. 



basalt ; and the traces of their sagacious industry are 

 now only traditional " graves " to the agricultural 

 peasants who have succeeded them. Still more 

 extensive ancient mines of the flint period exist in 

 Belgium. That the men who made these excavations 

 were industrious and ingenious we cannot doubt, yet 

 their flint knives and arrows are to us the indices of 

 a still ruder stage of humanity than that to which 

 we would refer their antler-pointed picks and basalt 

 chisels. 



It should perhaps somewhat moderate our pride 

 of higher civilization when we find that, with the ex- 

 ception of a few " flint Jacks," we have not only 

 lost the art of fabricating the beautiful chipped imple- 

 ments of the flint age, but that throughout the east, 

 and even among the peasantry of western Europe, 

 they are, when found, regarded as the work of super- 

 natural beings ; and as " elfin bolts," and under other 

 names, have strange talismanic virtues ascribed to 

 them, at which their ancient makers would have 

 smiled. Still these fancies have a venerable origin. 

 Among the flint folk themselves a flint-headed arrow 

 was a type of efficiency, as compared with one tipped 

 with bone, horn, or hardened wood. Hence, in the 

 traditions of the Micmacs, as collected by Mr. Eand, 

 and in old Norse Sagas referred to by Nilsson, it is 

 always a flint arrow that is used in slaying the giants 

 and other monsters of their tales. Such stories would 

 readily, after flint weapons fell into disuse, lead to the 

 belief in their magic powers ; nor is a great lapse of 



