PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 131 



French caves; an interesting example occurred among tlie objects 

 embedded in the red cave-earth of Kents's Hole, Devonshire ; and 

 others, of different periods, usually quartzite pebbles, or nodules of 

 flint, have been found in many localities. Some of them were 

 probably used in breaking the larger bones to extract the marrow ; 

 but the battered edges of others show their contact with harder 

 material. Similar hammer-stones occur in the Danish peat-mosses, 

 in the Swiss lake dwellings, and on our own continent, among other 

 remains of the arts of the aborigines. 



The mode of fashioning the large, tongue-shaped implements and 

 rude stone hatchets, which are among the most characteristic drift 

 implements, it can scarcely be doubted, was by blows of a stone or 

 flint hammer ; as was obviously the case with some large flint or 

 horn-stone implements recovered from the pits of the Flint Ridge, a 

 silicious deposit of the carboniferous age, which extends through the 

 State of Ohio, from Newark to New Lexington.* At various points 

 along the ridge, funnel-shaped pits occur, varying from four or five 

 to fifteen feet deep ; and similar traces of ancient mining may be 

 seen in other localities, as at Leavenworth, about three hundred 

 miles below Cincinnati, wliere the grey flint, or chert, abounds, of 

 which large implements are chiefly made. The sloping sides of the 

 pits are in many cases covered with the fractured flints, some of 

 them partially shaped as if for manufacture. The work in the quarry 

 was, no doubt, the mere rough fashioning of the flint by the tool- 

 makers, with a view to facility of ti^ansport, in many cases, to dis- 

 tant localities. But the finer manipulation, by means of which the 

 •carefully-finished arrow-heads, knives, lances, hoes, drills, scrapers, 

 ■etc., were manufactured, was reserved for leisurely and patient skill. 

 It is now known that the more delicate operations in the finishing 

 of the flint implements were done by means of pressure with a horn 

 or bone arrow-flaker ; and not by blows with a chisel or hammer. 

 Specimens of the arrow-flakers in use by the American Indian and 

 the Eskimo workers in flint are familiar to us. Different forms of 

 those instruments are engraved among the illustrations to " The 

 Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great 

 Britain ;"t and Dr. Evans describes the mode of using them as 

 witnessed by Sir Edward Belcher among the Eskimo of Cape 



* Prehistoric Man, 3rd Ed., i. TO, Figs. 5, 6 and 7. 

 t Evans' Stone Implements, Pigs. 8, 9, 10. 



