222 



transfix a man or an animal at a distance of thirty or forty yards with 

 one of these stone-headed spears when launched from a wamera, or 

 throwing- stick. 



Some of the small, flat, oval, flint implements from St. Acheul seem 

 to me well adapted for fitting on to long sticks, so as to be used as spears, 

 not to be thrown perhaps, but to be thrust, either into animals or ene- 

 mies. 



The other larger implements with a squarish form at one end, and 

 chipped to a sharp point at the other, were evidently digging instru- 

 ments, used either for grubbing up roots, or for making holes in ice, or 

 other similar purposes. Some that .1 have seen in Sir C. Lyell's collec- 

 tion had convenient x)arts of the original surface of the flint left about 

 the broad end, in order to afford a better grasp for the hand. 



The first thing that occurred to me after examining the gravel pits 

 was to find some means of determining between the true flint imple- 

 ments, which were originally buried in the gravel, and any spurious 

 ones manufactured by the workmen. As it happened to be a Sunday 

 afternoon, the men were not at work, and I had therefore an opportu- 

 nity of quietly examining the undisturbed gravel in the vertical faces of 

 the gravel pits before I went into the cottages to make purchases. 



The gravel consists chiefly of flints, some whole and some broken ; 

 and on examining the broken surfaces of large undisturbed flints, I per- 

 ceived that, in addition to the stains and discolouration s which some 

 of them showed, iYiej all, even the blackest, had a peculiar sheen" or 

 polish, not unlike the glaze on a piece of porcelain. On breaking a few 

 of these flints, I found that even the smoothest of the new surfaces of 

 fracture had a very different lustre from that of the old fractured sur- 

 faces which had been formed before the flints were deposited in the 

 gravel. 



I put into my pocket, accordingly, one of these lumps of flint as a test 

 instrument. This shows in some parts the original surface of concretion 

 which the flint had Avhen it lay in the chalk, as may be known by 

 the thin white coating surrounding the dark flint, the surface of which 

 coat is, in the gravel, often stained brown or j^ellow by ferrugineous co- 

 louring matter. In other places this piece of flint shows some old, irre- 

 gular surfaces of fracture, exhibiting the porcelain-like lustre side by 

 side with a new fracture made by my own hammer. The latter surface 

 has an obviously inferior kind of lustre to that on the former, being just 

 like the surface of an ordinary gun- flint. This lump of flint is among 

 those on the table, and a little comparison of its surfaces will enable any 

 one, as it enabled me, to recognise the genuine flints fashioned by the 

 old Pleistocene men, and buried in the gravel at the time of its deposi- 

 tion, and distinguish them from any newly fashioned imitation of them. 

 There is a spurious example among those on the table, which one of the 

 young boys from whom I bought them palmed off on me as a genuine 

 one, but which differs from the genuine ones in its form as much as in 

 the lustre of its surface. A little bit of an old fracture of surface re- 

 maining on this spurious example makes the contrast between the old 



