138 J. Cockburn—Wotes on Stone Implements. [No. 3, 
implements, figured a series, pointed out the principal types, and further 
extended the area of their prevalence to 200 miles east of the Tons river. 
He accounted for their abundance in the vicinity of Kirwi by the hypo- 
thesis that it was due to some “superstition which induced men of 
old time, to collect these relics of a still older age, and convey them 
to the shrines and localities where they are now so abundant, so that 
celts collected over thousands of square miles are now accumulated about 
Kirwi and its environs.” This supposition of Mr. Theobald’s agreed 
well at the time with the scarcity of other stone weapons in this area, 
compared with celts—one stone hammer, and a single chert arrow-head 
being alone recorded by Mr. LeMessurier. In the light of our present 
knowledge of stone remains within the Peninsular area, I would modify 
this theory of Mr. Theobald’s. In February 1878 I found a number of 
chert flakes on the eroded surface of a rain-washed field, situated on 
the bank of a small stream, only a couple of hundred yards away from 
a tope near the village of Hatwah, in pargana Chibun, district Banda. 
They were all of a small type, and exactly resembled those from Jabalpur 
in the Geological Museum. ‘Two of them were perfect, the remaining 
few were fragments, which when restored would havé been from three 
quarters of an inch to an inch anda quarter in length. Unfortunately 
they were all lost. Regarding the use of these flakes there can be 
very little doubt that they were used, held between the fingers and thumb, 
in making the first incision down the mesial line in the process of 
skinning, the remainder of the operation being completed with the com- 
paratively blunt celt, The discovery of these flakes led me to make more 
extended enquiries on the subject than hitherto from natives, some of 
whom were Bréhmans of intelligence, whose families had been settled in the 
villages around for generations. The more intelligent of these men, while 
stoutly maintaining the great antiquity of the celts, and that they (the 
Brahmans) had remembered the celts as children under the trees where the 
implements still remained, and that their fathers had handed down the 
same story to themselves, admitted that celts continued to be found to the 
present day; one of the Brahmans interrogated had found one himself, 
while the others had all heard of, or seen instances of celts being found in 
their own village fields. Some of the ignorant were unable to account for the 
reverence with which they regarded these stone remains ; evidently having a 
sort of confused idea that the celts were in some way connected with the 
Phallie emblem worshipped by the Hindus. Others considered the celts 
thunderbolts, calling them—“ Bijli ha puthul’’—lit. “stones of the light- 
ning,” an idea which prevails in every quarter of the globe. 
Ican confirm what Mr. Theobald says regarding the ability of the 
