350 The Flint Tools of North Devon . 



THE FLINT TOOLS OF NOBTH DEVON". 



BY TOWNSHEND M. HALL, F.G.S. 



(With Two Plates.) 



No field of investigation so completely acts as a connecting 

 link between the geologist and antiquary as that which within 

 the last few years has excited such an unusual amount of 

 interest, and has been the ground of much dispute — the 

 records of Prehistoric man as read by the light of the flint im- 

 plements from the " Drift. " The question stands now as it has 

 stood for some time past. Flints of a certain shape are found 

 in the drift, a deposit considered by geologists to be of an anti- 

 quity so vast, that no scale of time can be correctly applied to 

 measure its age. If therefore the flints received their shape 

 from the hands of man, then the human race must have ex- 

 isted at the time of the formation of the drift-beds, and must 

 be of an antiquity equally great. Although this reasoning- 

 may be perfect in a logical point of view, still for practical 

 purposes and for practical inquirers it may be somewhat too 

 inductive in its character. Two important questions arise at 

 the very first stage of the subject. First, are the flints really 

 shaped by the hands of man, or is their peculiar form of 

 cleavage produced by natural causes of fracture ? Secondly, 

 is the drift of the extreme antiquity geologists have assigned 

 to it ? With regard to the first, the flints which have been 

 found can all, or nearly all, be classed according to their shape, 

 and reduced to three or four definite patterns or standards. 

 Natural causes of fracture will no doubt, on very rare occasions, 

 split flints into a somewhat approximate form, but it would be 

 stretching the bounds of the laws of probabilities to too great 

 an extent to suppose that all, or even a fractional part of the 

 number of shaped flints found at different times in France and 

 elsewhere, could have received their form by natural sources of 

 fracture. Of course some natural process, of which we are 

 now ignorant, may at one time have been in operation ; but if 

 in the valley of the Somme, in the Dordogne, and in two or 

 three places in England, it turned so many flints into hatchets 

 and arrow-heads, how is it we do not find abundance of these 

 arrow-heads and hatchet-shaped flints in Hampshire, Wiltshire, 

 Dorsetshire, and every other county where the raw materi.il 

 is so plentiful, and where therefore the "natural process" 

 would have full scope for development? Other evidence 

 bearing on the question of art versus nature is to be found in 

 a bulbous projection which may generally be noticed on the 

 flat side of the flake. It always points out the spot where the 



