22 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



them with figs. 10, 11, 12, 13, or any other representation of a true " celt," which 

 is in fact a chisel, and wrought to a cutting edge at the broad end ; while these 

 fossil instruments are nearly or totally unwrought at the broad end, but are 

 worked up to a more or less sharp point, which is evidently the part that was 

 used. 



Of the fossil flint-knives, arrow-heads, and javelin-points, such as we shall here- 

 after refer to, no doubt as to their uses can arise in the minds of any who will take 

 the trouble to compare them with instruments adapted to the same purposes 

 in hunting — the favourite pursuit and main source of existence of all savage 

 tribes — which are still in use by the aborigines of various countries, or rather 

 are known to have been so in recent times, for European tools of iron have 

 rapidly and very generally supplanted stone-implements, even in the remotest 

 regions. But the same definiteness of purpose or applicability is not evident 

 in the larger and pear-shaped instruments to which we first drew attention. 

 These, if they were used by the hand, must have been used at the point ; celts, 

 having the broad end ground or rubbed to a cutting-edge, were used as 

 chisels, or mounted in fragments of horn or wood, as axes or hatchets. 



"F.g. 14.— Stone Celt set in portion of Stag's-horn, with Transverse Hole for Wooden Handle. 

 In the British Museum. 



The pointed fossil implements might possibly have been used as wedges for 

 splitting trees, and other like purposes ; or bound in split sticks as battle-axes, 

 and formidable weapons they would have made. But the most reasonable 

 use seems to me that of spear-heads, lashed on to stout poles ; and wielded by 

 strong and active men they would have been heavy and formidable weapons 

 against the great deer and oxen of that age of gigantic mammalia upon the 

 herds of which primitive man — if he lived in the days of the mammoth as the 

 association of the bones of that huge beast with these relics of the first human 

 workmanship seems at least to prove — would have occasion and necessity to 

 make constant onslaught for his subsistence, his clothing, and his articles and 

 materials of daily use. Against the great elephants, tigers, and cave-bears of 

 that age we think they could only have been used — if at all — under the pressure 

 of the imperative necessity of personal defence, and never for the purpose of 

 offensive attack. Hence if we are to find any traces of their uses in the shape 

 of indentations, scars, or wounds upon the bones of the extinct quadrupeds, it 

 should be on those of the great herbivora, and not those of the carnivora that 

 wc should expect to find them. 



Professor Owen in his " British Fossil Mammalia, 55 has noticed the injury 



