78 WORKED FLINTS. 



frequent, and a jasper also occurred. The largest specimen, which 

 was nearly 4 lbs. in weight, clearly showed traces of artificial working, 

 and, as I am informed by Professor Liversidge, was evidently a 

 large, stone axe or tomahawk. Of the rest, some were cores, others 

 were flakes, resembling in their form, and often in their white colour, 

 the flakes of the post-tertiary gravels ; whilst one specimen possessed 

 the shape of an ai'row-head. Some of these flints presented the 

 appearance of having been re-fashioned after lying disused for ages. 

 In such specimens, there were two sets of facets or fractured surfaces, 

 the one whitened by weathering or exposure, the other displaying 

 the natural colour of recently broken flint. All were, in fact, of the 

 paloeolithic type. The specimens, that I obtained in the islands of 

 Treasury and Alu in Bougainville Straits, were usually of chalcedonic 

 flint, and possessed the form of hammer-stones, scrapers, etc. 

 AVorked flints will probably be found in most of the islands of the 

 Solomon Group, except, perhaps, in those of purely volcanic forma- 

 tion {vide page 80). They are said to occur in Santa Anna, and I had 

 a specimen given to me from UJaua. 



There are two interesting circumstances in connection with these 

 flints to which I should allude. In the first place, the inhabitants 

 of these islands are ignorant of their nature and their source. I 

 was gravely informed by the natives of Treasury Island, that the 

 flints which they brought me from the disturbed soil of their 

 ])lantations had tumbled from the sky, a superstition which reminds 

 one of a similar belief prevalent in some rural districts of our own 

 country as to the origin of the polished stone implements or celts. 

 In a similar way the men of the Shortland Islands explained to me 

 the occurrence beneath the soil of lumps of gum, which, like the 

 masses of the kauri gum of New Zealand, mark the original position 

 of the trees from which they were derived. 



Concerning these flint implements, we may fitly ask : Who were 

 the race of men that formed and used them ? How long a period 

 has elapsed since these men inhabited this region ? Whence did 

 they come ? Where are their descendants to be sought ? Are they 

 to be found amongst the present inhabitants of this group, who, 

 having discarded, the rude flint implements for jiolished stone tools 

 of volcanic rock, regard, with ignorant contempt, the handiwork of 

 their ancestors ? To these queries we may with some confidence 

 re[)ly that the original inhabitants of these islands belonged to the 

 once widely spread Negrito race, of which we find the remnants in 



