36 



SCIENCE-GOSSTP. 



PIGMY FLINTS. 



By the Rev. Reginald A. Gatty. 



T WILL not venture to enter on the question of 

 how long ago it was that the primitive 

 inhabitant of Britain used flint, because he was 

 ignorant of the existence of bronze or iron. This 

 must be left for future determination. At present 

 we are much in the dark, and what is wanted is 

 some better classification of flint implements. I 

 have styled this paper pigmy flints because I 

 propose leaving the beaten track of ordinary flint 

 weapons, and entering upon what is almost a novel 

 phase. For some years past I have carefully 

 preserved all specimens of flint implements I came 

 across, both small and great. It was easy work to 

 put out in drawers the arrowheads, some barbed, 

 some leaf-shaped, some broad-tipped ; and in 

 another drawer to range the knives and scrapers 

 in their order. 

 When it came 

 to minute speci- 

 mens ; to flint 

 implements 

 carefully and 

 perfectly made, 

 no bigger than 

 half-an-inch,and 

 many much less, 

 I am bound to 

 say I was com- 

 pletely puzzled. 

 The first ques- 

 tion which arose 

 was : Are these 

 genuine ? Is 

 there not some mistake ? 

 dental chippings, struck 

 the ancient flint worker was framing his tools. 

 A closer inspection with a magnifying glass 

 proved that this was impossible. Whoever the 

 people were who made these implements, they spent 

 an enormous amount of skill and patience in their 

 construction. They designed them with a purpose, 

 and the flints must in some way have supplied a 

 requisite want. I will take one specimen, which I 

 will call a crescent-shaped knife, for examination. 

 To show the size of this perfect tool it exactly 

 covers in length the word "examination" as printed 

 on this page, and its breadth is a trifle broader 

 than the printing. I am led to give it the name of 

 crescent because it has that form, and also in a 

 pamphlet written by Dr. H. Colley March, of 

 Rochdale, entitled, "The early neolithic floor of 

 East Lancashire," I find reference to similar 

 implements discovered in India. He says : " In the 

 Colonial Exhibition, at South Kensington, there 



Pigmy Flints, Natural 

 (The Upper Specimen is the 



They might be acci- 

 off at random when 



were shown, last year, as the work of Bushmen, 

 Hottentots, and Kaffirs, some diminutive tools of 

 flint, labelled 'drills.' Similar flint implements 

 have been met with in Egypt ; in the Exeter 

 Museum are some slender points of worked flint 

 that were discovered beneath a submerged forest 

 near Westward Ho ! and small worked crescents 

 of flint and agate have been found in caves of the 

 Vindhya Hills of India. But all these are far 

 surpassed, as regards minuteness and delicacy of 

 workmanship, by the implements of the East 

 Lancashire floor. Indeed, in some of them, the 

 secondary flaking is so fine that it cannot well be 

 seen without a magnifying glass. Roughly speak- 

 ing these minute implements are divisible into two 

 classes, and are probably borers or gravers." 



The peculiarity 

 of these dis- 

 coveries of Dr. 

 Colley March is, 

 that they were 

 made at a depth 

 of six feet under 

 peat, and at an 

 altitude of thir- 

 teen hundred 

 feet above sea 

 level. The 

 weapons found 

 by myself were 

 all taken from 

 the ploughed 

 fields, none of 

 which exceeded two hundred feet above sea level. 

 I must except a few which I found on the moors 

 quite one thousand feet above the sea. It is 

 very difficult to classify the pigmy flints, or to 

 assign them a definite use. Many are like tiny 

 knife blades, and I have also many borers. They 

 differ considerably in shape : some are oval, some 

 squared at the edges, but all show working of such 

 a delicate character, that it requires a magnifying 

 glass to detect the flakings on the edges. I tried to 

 count the flakings on the crescent- shaped knife 

 above alluded to, and I found there must have 

 been above a hundred along the edges. The 

 quantity of pigmy flints obtained is surprising, and I 

 have a collection of some hundreds. You may be 

 tempted to throw aside small fragments when you 

 pick them up in the fields, but this is never wise to 

 do, until you have washed your flint, and then 

 subjected it to careful examination under a strong 

 magnifying glass. When you have got -what I may 

 term a " worked " flint, it is quite unmistakable 



Size and Enlarged. 

 :i Crescent-Shaped Flint. 



