SMITH — FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE " OTLE " CAVE, TENBY. 49 



rived at from a general view of them scattered upon the table, whether 

 found in "the Oyle," at lied Hill, or elsewhere, is that these chips 

 are the rejected refuse of the workshop. " On this spot," the 

 thoughtful observer is disposed to say, " some weapons or implements 

 were fabricated on some one or more occasions ; and while the per- 

 fected ones were carried away, these inartistic though somewhat 

 shapely fragments were left on the floor where they fell, and at length 

 became buried, partly by the tramp of animals, and partly by acci- 

 dents of daily human life." I feel sure of this conclusion, not only 

 because most of the flint chips which we have in collections (as that 

 handful, for instance, in the British Museum, which are said to have 

 come from Arabia) are in reality nothing but primary splinters, which 

 have never received a second perfecting stroke or trimming from the 

 hand, but also from the following argument : — 



Assuming these to be mis-shapen chips struck off on the spot, would 

 there not be found among so many one or two perfected specimens 

 of the tools or weapons assigned ? This is very probable — almost 

 certain ; but not so probable as that some broken specimen of the 

 tools, broken in the process of completion, would occur here and 

 there. And so it proves in this case ; for among these seventy-three 

 specimens, there are eight broken pieces which have received much 

 manipulation, and have heads elaborately rounded off, by removing 

 small conchoidal scales. And further, the lumps of flint which have 

 been split up as long as they would yield flakes strengthen the argu- 

 ment ; for they, too, are left behind commingled with the rest of the 

 abandoned fragments. 



Secondly, by what race of men were these implements fabricated ? 

 The reporter, supposing these chips to be ancient, has no hesitation 

 in ascribing them to the same natives of Britain by whom the tumuli 

 on the Kidgeway above were raised, and who buried with their dead 

 the flint arrow-heads found within those mounds. No other suppo- 

 sition obviously needs to be entertained. 



But who were this race of men ? The world say, " Britons, to be 

 sure ; these are British barrows, and those vases on your shelf are 

 British urns that you obtained from them." 



Well, let us suppose so for a while. But surely, if such is the case, 

 these descendants of the British who live around "the Oyle" and 

 the barrows here in Wales, and who certainly are in possession of much 

 ancient literature, while the Saxons brought us next to none, would 

 be able to inform us whether their ancestors ever used flint tools or 

 weapons in early days, especially as the records relate to the very- 

 first possession of the island by the race of Adam. Led by this 

 thought, I have corresponded with the ablest Welsh archaeologists, 

 and have been favoured with full replies; but all deny that their 

 forefathers ever used anything but bronze and iron for war or in the 

 chase, but say that there is a notice or two in their very early docu- 

 ments of the use of flint knives for sacrificial purposes only. This 

 admission, however, proves nothing; for other races of men, — the 

 Jews, for instance, — while they certainly had tools of metal, uni- 



VOL. VI. IL 



