1S92-93.] 5^i 



our forms of worked flints. The flakes are interesting as 

 Ireland's earliest tools or weapons, but they are still more so, as 

 typical of the earliest weapons of all other countries in the Old 

 and New Worlds. The flint-flakes collected from the plains 

 about Ormeau, Belfast, are undistinguishable from the flakes 

 picked up on the plains of Marathon, quarried from the stalag- 

 mitic floors of French caverns, or dug from the lake dwellings 

 of Switzerland, and the kitchen-middens of Denmark.* The 

 flint scraper, so abundant in the sand-dunes of Dundrum, 

 Portrush, and Ballintoy, and indeed, wherever the flakes are 

 numerous in County Antrim, is in every respect a facsimile of 

 what may be found among the antiquarian remains of China, 

 America, Egypt, India, and the older countries of Europe, and 

 there are no varieties of this flint scraper from any of the pre- 

 historic stations of Europe that could not be matched by similar 

 forms from the ancient settlements of Antrim. f 



A simple flake, being the result of a single blow, with or 

 without preparation, must assume an indefinite variety of forms, 

 as various as the purposes to which it was applied, — what 

 such purposes were it is vain to speculate. Many of the rudest 

 and most shapeless flakes show such an amount of careful 

 secondary chipping as would indicate that the fabricators aimed at 

 adapting each to some special definite purpose. Many flakes 

 were struck off" by a single blow, perfectly formed without any 

 secondary chipping or dressing, and were adapted to useful 

 purposes, as the Australian flake already referred to. Others 

 again only required a very slight additional dressing to convert 

 them into the required implement. As the most unskilful 

 workman labours hardest to accomplish his object, so we find 

 that the most awkward or irregular forms of worked flints show 

 the greatest amount of secondary chipping. There are several 

 leading forms, such as scrapers, knives, borers, and particularly 

 the well-known arrow-heads, towards the manufacture of 



* See " Reliquiae Aquitanicae," edited by T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S. 



t See the author's paper on " The character and distribution of rudely-worked flints 

 of the North of Ireland " — Proceedings of the Royal Historical and Archaeo- 

 logical Society of Ireland, Vol. V., fourth series. 



