the fore part of the head, which it passed through, and carried 

 out its own size of the brains at the poll. In modern times 

 women's brains are, happily, more usefully applied. The 

 Dinnseanchus records the fact of a poetess, Dubh, having been 

 slain by a stone cast from a sling, when she fell into the Linn, 

 or dark pool of the LifTey, and hence the place was said to have 

 been called from her Dubhlinn.* 



In later times, on the introduction of cannon, stone shot were 

 used, and there is a record of an attack made by the Irish upon 

 a certain castle, when the Irish, who made the attack, provided 

 a cannon, constructed out of staves like a barrel : this was 

 charged with powder and a stone shot, which, having been fired, 

 gave a puff behind and before, and left the shot in the middle. 



Later still, worked flints formed an important item in the 

 munitions of war, and flints were used for the purpose of dis- 

 charging cannon, as well as the smaller fire-arms. 



The dressed flake, assuming the form of a scraper, as has been 

 shewn, was a distinct and well- recognised form, widely distributed 

 over the world, and of extreme antiquity. For whatever purpose 

 it was originally formed, we know that in process of time it was 

 adapted for the dressing of skins by the modern Esquimaux, 

 but, no doubt, it was used for a great variety of purposes, — one 

 of the most interesting and important being its use for producing 

 fire ; the property of eliciting a spark when struck, was a 

 discovery of the highest importance to primitive man, and its 

 practical use for this purpose has survived until our own time. 

 Flint strike-a-lights superseded the tedious, wooden fire-drill of 

 the Finns and Laps, and the Bow-drill of the Sioux and the 

 Dacota Indians, and was in use long before the employment of 

 steel implements for striking the spark. 



The worked flint strike-a-lights were first used with prepared 

 nodules of iron pyrites, of which a flat surface was formed, and 

 the violent friction of the flint against the surface produced the 

 spark. Implements of this kind — iron pyrites and flint scrapers — 

 were found by Canon Greenwell, of Durham, in some ancient 



• Sec Sir W. Wilde's '« Catalogue of Irish Antiquities." 



