232 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Oct. 



" I am but ill-acquainted with the remarkable accumulation of dis- 

 coveries with respect to the prehistoric flint weapons of Europe, but 

 I cannot help thinking that had any specimens, of equal neatness and 

 beauty to these, occurred in the caves and shell mounds of France and 

 Denmark, illustrations of them would be more numerous in the works 

 relating to the subject. One other remarkable character in which the 

 Central India cores differ from those figured from Europe, is in their 

 extremely small size. Many of the most neatly shaped specimens are 

 less than an inch in length, some less than J inch. It is difficult to 

 understand how they can have been fashioned, and to what purpose 

 the little flakes obtained from them have been applied. Possibly the 

 latter were used as needles, or they may have been largely employed to 

 tip small darts used for killing birds and small mammals, or, very pro- 

 bably, fish. Fish are still frequently shot by arrows in parts of India 

 and Burmah, and I have myself seen men engaged in this mode of 

 capture in both countries. 



" The material of which all these implements are formed is agate 

 or jasper, derived from the trap formation so extensively developed 

 in Central and Western India. It is a beautifully homogeneous stone ; 

 very hard, and the edges of flakes split from it are extremely sharp. 

 It is similar in mineral character and composition to the flint used by 

 the early races of Western Europe, and is of equally good quality. 



" With respect to by far the most interesting questions affecting these 

 chipped implements, viz. their mode of occurrence and their geological 

 antiquity, we have, unfortunately, very little information. Lieutenant 

 Swiney's account of his discovery of the specimens in the neighbour- 

 hood of Jubbulpoor has been published in the Proceedings of the 

 Society for April, 1865. I have myself, during the past year, found 

 one very beautiful specimen of the long subprismatic form of core 

 (PI. III., fig. 12) close to the village of Singara, about 15 miles north 

 of the station of Chindwara, in the Central Provinces ; and I also met 

 with 4 or 5 fragments of agate and jasper, from which flakes had 

 evidently been chipped, on the banks of the smaller Sawa river, about 

 20 miles E. N. E. of the station of Kundwa in Nimar. The last loca- 

 lity is in a wild, almost uninhabited jungle. In both instances the 

 cores were lying at the surface of the ground, 



" It is probable that the area indicated, viz. the valley of the Nerbudda 

 and its neighbourhood, for a distance from east to west of about 200 



