552 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



fowl, to supply the cravings of his appetite, he became familiar 

 with the home, the habits, and the life-history of the animals 

 required for food. He had not only to hunt down the animals 

 for food, but he had to protect himself against the attacks of wild 

 beasts that shared in the same pursuit. 



Man, in common with all other animals, was instinctively 

 prompted to the necessity for self-preservation, and his reason 

 guided him in the selection of those methods best adapted to 

 secure this end, and to the necessity for weapons of defence in 

 dealing with the natural propensities of the various, numerous, 

 and often ferocious animals with which he was surrounded, and 

 with which he had to compete during the earliest ages. It was 

 by the exercise of his reason, and by the experience obtained 

 after many years of conference with his fellows, that he was at 

 length led to select flint as a suitable material for his purpose ; 

 and no doubt for ages those strange and distinctive nodules of 

 flint, common to the Cretaceous rocks, were, to primitive man, 

 objects of no less interest than they are still to the modern 

 naturalist. 



Primitive man being a field naturalist, who observed all that 

 was strange and distinctive in natural phenomena, we can easily 

 imagine that his attention and interest were aroused when, as a 

 wandering nomad, he first beheld a Chalk cliff, such as the 

 "White Rocks" along the northern coast of Antrim, or an 

 inland section of pure white Cretaceous rocks, with its well- 

 marked bands of dark flints standing out from the weathered 

 surface ; or, having fallen, lying broken up into suggestive 

 implements at the base, such as is common in the Chalk quarries 

 and cliffs of Antrim ; and the adoption of this suggestion was 

 to him, and his race, equivalent to our discovery of coal, or the 

 magnet. 



This was the commencement of that indefinite period known 

 as the Stone Age, — a period that has never closed since then. 

 We employ at the present day, as primitive man did then, stone 

 for a great variety of purposes, and the application of stone for 

 such purposes has been continuous from the earliest ages. As 



