198 REY. R. A. BULLEN, B.A., ON EOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS. 
its physical and chemical structure* may account for the 
varying tints assumed in the same staining medium. 
It has been suggested by some that the Koliths owe their 
colour to the local gravel in which some of them are found, 
but the conditions of the superficial deposits do not admit 
of this solution of the question. 
§1X. KHoliths: their possible uses—Eoliths group them- 
selves into certain well-defined classes or types. These 
types, In some instances at least, bear rude resemblances to 
tools or weapons of which the use is known; but in others, 
beyond the chipped and battered edges, eolithic man has 
left little trace of his agency upon them. However, this 
uncertainty as to the intention of the makers and users of 
these implements need not trouble us, as there are many 
stone implements the applications of which are unknown. 
§X. The uses of some old Implements obscure—Mr. W. J. 
Lewis Abbott has pointed out that the use of the small 
exquisitely worked trapezoidal Neoliths, from the Hastings 
Kitchen-Middens, the Valley of the Meuse, etc., has not been 
explained. 
In Dr. Grierson’s Museum, Thornhill, N.B., there are some 
long heavy stones, of modern date, bearing very little trace 
of man’s handiwork, and yet they are known to have been used 
in the Orkneys in modern times as weights for tethering cows, 
a use no stranger would attribute to them from their shape. 
The small stone balls with beautifully worked surfaces, 
from various parts of Scotland and Ireland, are of uncertain 
use.t Even their age is doubtful. 
* Report of U.S. National Museum, 1897, Plates X VI-XIX. 
The great variation in the intimate structure of flint is well illustrated 
by Mr. Thomas Wilson, Curator of the Division of Prehistoric Arche- 
ology, Smithsonian Institution, U.S.A. The mineralogical descriptions 
are by Dr. G. P. Merrill. 
The English flints illustrated from the microscope in Plate XVI are 
from Brandon, Grimes Graves, and Dorchester (Dorset). 
The specimen from Brandon, while generally chalcedonic in character, 
“shows minute amorphous yellowish and black particles, which are 
presumably ferruginous and carbonaceous matter.” In other instances 
(not English) he mentions chalcedonic silica with interstitial calcite. 
It is certain that flint, while mainly consisting of silica, is not homo- 
geneous in structure, and therefore flints will lend themselves to the 
reception of ferruginous and other stain according to their varying 
composition and porosity. 
+ Evans, Stone Implements, pp. 420-421. See also Anderson, Scotland 
in Pagan Times (ed. 1883), pp. 122, 220, 232, 249, for implements of stone, 
bone, and bronze, of which the uses are unknown. 
