RECENT FLINT FINDS. 123 



In the valley under Bishop's Wood, near Truro, I picked up 

 two flakes ; and, scattered through the soil of the Lowlands at St. 

 Keverne, are many split flints. 



But I have now to describe a most notable Find of arrow- 

 headed flakes. In passing over that part of the Lizard table-land 

 which is called Crousa Downs, I observed that the earthy part of 

 the soil was washed away in patches, and that angular fragments 

 of stone were exposed ; and a few minutes* search produced more 

 than 20 fractured flints, some of them perfect thin flakes of the 

 arrow-head type. They were scattered between blocks of horn- 

 blende rock, over a barren surface which had never been cultivated, 

 300 feet above the sea. These flakes have lancet points, marks 

 of chipping on their surface, and the bulb of percussion at the 

 large end, said to indicate the direction of the blow by which they 

 were severed ; and which is assumed to be a proof of design, and, 

 of course, of a designer. 



This bulb of percussion is relied on as the almost exclusive 

 evidence that the flakes were formed by man. It appears to be 

 the result of a blow by impact ; or it might have been caused by 

 rolling pressure, or by expansion from unequal temperature. But, 

 however produced, this appears certain, — that the rough split 

 flints, so indefinite in form as to bear no marks of human skill, 

 have this bulb as perfectly developed as the most perfect flakes. 

 On inspecting the Chalk country covered with Drift gravel, 

 around Henley on Thames, I found the arable land, for mUes, 

 loaded with split and shattered flints ; so coarse was the fracture, 

 so abundant the flints, so indefinite their form, that it was impos- 

 sible to infer that they were broken by the hand of man, to be 

 manufactured into^tools ; and yet in many of them, this bulb of 

 percussion was most perfectly developed. Impressed by the 

 weight of this evidence, I determined to examine the Chalk of the 

 Isle of Wight, where the flints (as described by Mantell) are 

 shattered in situ. I there found, in the soil on the north side of 

 Bembridge Down, these flints known to he s^lit by natural causes; 

 and the roughest pieces showed the bulb of percussion as perfectly 

 formed as those near Henley. 



I do not, therefore, see how it is possible to avoid the con- 

 clusion that this bulb, said to be evidence of design, has in fact 

 been produced by natural causes, and not by the skill of man. 



