370 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



station numbered, about twelve for every manufactured article,^ but 

 when studying these closely on the spot I found that they must almost 

 all have been rejected as failures. I was able to collect a small number 

 of good flakes, such as it was evidently the intention of the workman 

 to produce, and comparing these flakes with the scrapers found in such 

 abundance in this place I observed that they had curves round the end 

 opposite the bulb of percussion similar to those on the scrapers them- 

 selves, also that they could be classed like the scrapers into those 

 having curves which were circular, elliptical, oblique, etc. Those 

 curves in the flakes were produced owing to the core from which they 

 were derived, being, in the first instance, a rounded water-woni 

 pebble or small boulder of flint. We can observe the method of manu- 

 faetui'e that was followed. One of the small boulders was flrst split 

 across, and then from its broken sui'face a series of flakes were struck 

 off, the first one being an entirely outside flake like fig. 74, No. X. ; 

 then each of the other flakes of the first row would have its back, part 

 outside and part fractured face, like figs. 69 and 76 in ISTo. X. All 

 the first row of flakes would carry olf enough of the rounded part of 

 the cores to give some kind of curve to the end opposite the bulb, asflgs. 

 69 and 71 circular; 73, 74, and 75 oblique; 72 eliptical, etc. The 

 second row of flakes would terminate a little lower down than the first 

 row, and carry away a small margin of the original crust of the core. 

 This small piece of original crust in either the first or second row of 

 flakes gives a bevelled edge at once, and we find many instances of 

 fiakes of this kind being changed into scrapers by the slightest amount 

 of di'essing, half the original crust perhaps remaining, which lets us see 

 plainly how the thing was done. Yery good examples of this are seen 

 in figs. 69 and 70, No. X., as in fig. 69 you have two views of a flake 

 which has not been touched by di'essing, while in fig. 70 you have one 

 almost similar in shape, with a very slight amount of chipping round 

 the margin, thus forming it into a scraper. The chipping is so slight 

 that only part of the old crust has been removed. Figs. 77 and 78 are 

 two small scraper flakes which fit on each other. Two views are 

 shown of fig. 77. 



The producers of flakes at "WTiitepark Bay appear to have set to 

 work with the intention of manufacturing flakes suitable for scrapers. 

 They were often successful in their work, but they had many failures. 

 These failures were not all allowed to go to loss, for if any waste piece 

 had a straight sharp edge it was almost certain to have been used in 



1 Proc, 3 Ser., vol. i., No. 5, p. 622. 



