I 



THE IRON, THE BEONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 673 



weapons. It is true that in the great factory for flint weapons, 

 ^hich has been described by Major-General Lane Fox (' Journal 

 .nth. Inst.,' V. 3, 1876)^ at Oissbury, an implement, or implements, 

 [which could only be used as held in the naked hand, came out 

 [during the period of the excavations carried on there, and amongst 

 multitudes of ' celts,' which were as obviously intended to be used iu 

 handles. But survivals were not unknown in the great Stone Age 

 any more than in our great Steel Age ; and for the very various 

 manipulative processes connected with the working of a Flint-mine, 

 with its tortuous galleries, necessitating an amount of ' body- 

 bending toil' no way inferior to that necessitated by the galleries 

 of the modern coal-pit, a pointed stone weapon which had a blunt 

 end fitted for a hand grasp would not rarely have its advantage. 

 The fact that at Cissbury, as also at Grimes Graves, in Norfolk 

 (for which see 'Journal Ethn. Soc.,' N.S., ii. p. 214), and at Spienne, 

 in Belgium (for which see ' M^m. Soc. Sci. et Arts du Hainaut,' 

 1866-7, p. ^^^), it was found w^orth while to undertake and 

 execute such extensive works as are those flint-mines, enables us 

 to realise the meaning of the words ' Stone Age ■* very vividly. 

 The demand for these weapons was so great that it was found 

 profitable to go through all this toil to supply it ; the margin of 

 advantage which made it profitable, lying in the mineralogical 

 fact that a flint taken freshly out of its chalky matrix, and retain- 

 ing its normal hygrometric properties, is more workable and 

 plastic than a flint which has been rolled about the world in 

 floods per mare per terram. A modern workman will break flints 

 fresh from the chalk for a shilling, whilst for an equal amount of 

 results for gravel pebbles he will charge you eighteen-pence. It 

 may seem something of a contradiction to the principles of the 

 identity of the period of handled, with that of polished, as opposed 

 to chipped flints, to say that the flints manufactured at Cissbury 

 were, with the few exceptions alluded to, all intended to be fitted 

 with handles, and yet that they were all left unpolished ; but the 

 process of polishing a flint, when finely/ chipped, as these are, is a 

 very easy one, involving only the use of a little sand and water 

 to rub the broad chipped cutting edge into smoothness, on a stone 

 such as modern savages use for the purpose ; and the modern 

 manufactory of metal weapons shows us that weapons and imple- 

 ments of all kinds are, from certain considerations of expediency, 



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