SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



37 



No process of nature can ever imitate the delicate 

 flakings by which the edge, say of a flint knife, has 

 been brought to perfection. The work is no doubt 

 due to pressure. A hard body is pressed against 

 the side which it is intended to sharpen, and 

 fragments fly off leaving a scar behind in the 

 form of a slight indentation. This is readily 

 observed on a flint some inches in length, but 

 when you get down to very 

 minute sizes, to little well- 

 formed flints less than a 

 quarter of an inch, you 

 need a magnifying glass to 

 discover the workmanship. 

 What hands, what eyes, 

 these pre-historic flint- 

 flakers must have had to 

 frame such delicate tools ! 

 I often look in amazement 

 at a drawer of these pigmy 

 flints. Perhaps sixty or 

 seventy knives and borers 

 will make one row, and 

 when seen together, row 

 after row, you realise that 

 these flints were fabricated 

 with a design and purpose, 

 and whoever the people 

 were who made them, 



dwarfs or fairies, they certainly were handi- 

 craftsmen of no mean order. It is very difficult to 

 give any idea of the various forms which these 

 flints take. I think the pervading notion seems to 

 have been to use them fixed in some sort of handle. 

 In fact, without such aid, they could do nothing 

 with the fingers. It would be possible, I think, to 

 arrive at some solution of this difficulty if we 

 could place the pigmy flints before a tribe of 

 savages, such as the Bushmen of Africa. Perhaps 

 in time to come, when more is known on this 

 subject, such may be done. 

 Collections are wanted from all parts of the 



Pigmy Flints, Natural Size and Enlarged. 



world. By comparing notes, by steadily accumu- 

 lating evidences, much might be brought to light 

 The migration of. man from one part of the world 

 to another could be traced, and the pre-historic 

 story of our race might have considerable light 

 thrown upon it. I have alluded to the pamphlet, 

 by Dr. Colley March, on the early neolithic floor 

 of East Lancashire, in which he states that small 

 crescent - shaped knives 

 have been found in the 

 Vindhya caves of India, 

 similar to those of Lan- 

 cashire, and similar again 

 to those which I have 

 found on the ploughed 

 fields. There is an im- 

 mense distance to be 

 covered between India and 

 England, but vast as the 

 space may be, to what 

 lengths of time must we 

 go to date the formation 

 of the peat 1,300 feet above 

 sea-level, under which such 

 knives have been found ? 

 And these are pigmy flints 

 we are dealing with, not the 

 big palaeolithic weapons of 

 the drift. In these sub- 

 stantial implements there is something tangible 

 and reasonable. We can imagine a savage breaking 

 a hole in the ice to let down his fishing line, or 

 raising it aloft to hit his enemy on the head. But 

 a crescent knife has no such ostensible use. It 

 faintly resembles the crescent of a new moon, and 

 may have been copied from that luminary. It is 

 worked, or rather flaked all round, giving a cutting 

 edge every way, and its horns are very sharp. 

 That this should be found in India and England, 

 and, more than all, below a peat stratum, is 

 certainly a most remarkable fact. 



Hoolou Roberts Rectory, Rotherham ; February, 1S95. 



NOTES ON LEPIDOPTERA IN 1894. 

 By R. M. Prideaux. 



T N contrast to the miserable season that followed, 

 and was experienced everywhere throughout 

 Britain, a few warm sunny days at the end of 

 April and early in May brought the spring butter- 

 flies out, in Surrey, in abundance, and well up to 

 date. On April 29th were observed, in one locality 

 near Dorking, Euchloe caniamincs, A rgytmis euphrosyne, 

 Pararge egeria, Ccenoiiymplui pamphillus, Nemeobius 

 lucina, Thccla rubi, Polyommatus phlceas, Lycana argi- 

 olus, Nisoniades tages, and Syrichlhus malvj. Shortly 

 afterwards, the weather became cold, wet and un- 



settled, moths scarce everywhere, but especially 

 at light, even the commonest species being absent. 

 Larva?, on the other hand, began to appear in great 

 profusion. About the 19th of May, the oak woods 

 near Oxshott began to lose their recently-acquired 

 verdant appearance, and by the 26th had a miserably 

 blighted aspect — not a whole oak-leaf to be seen any- 

 where. There had been pretty severe east winds for 

 a day or two previously, and the west side of the 

 tree trunks presented a curious sight, being draped 

 and festooned with dense webs and ladders of silk 



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