M. GllAS' ATTACK 01^ THE PLl^^T-IMPLEMEIfTS. 



287 



come from, before we can say much about tbem. I suppose, however, 

 whether ancient or modern, not more than a hundred exist from that, 

 the largest county in England and numbering as many acres as 

 there are words in the Bible. M. Gras sa3's, however, that in the 

 rich collection of M. Boucher de Perthes, there are more than a thou- 

 sand ; that M. Toillez, of Mons, possesses four hundred ; and that at 

 St. Acheul the numhev found in the compass of a hectare (two acres) 

 has been estimated at more than 3000 ! Now, does M. Gras mean 

 that at St. Acheul two acres of gravel have been excavated for flint- 

 implements ? or does he mean that in proportion to the quantity of 

 gravel actually excavated there, an estimate has been made of the 

 probable number of 3000 as existing in two acres of gravel ? How 

 many feet thick ? There's a rub. Two acres, 30 feet thick, would 

 contain some millions of tons of gravel, this proportion of flint-im- 

 plements to the number and quantity of unworked flints and pebbles 

 in w]]ich would be very small indeed. Take the total of 3000 in 

 another way, and suppose each man of a tribe numbering a hundred 

 males to make or lose one new weapon every two years, from the age 

 of twenty to the age of forty, after which period of lifetime we 

 will suppose every man to be either useless, superannuated, or 

 killed in battle or by wild beasts in the chase. Then it would only 

 take three generations of this little tribe to make or lose the quan- 

 tity M. Gras thinks so enormous. 



Eeally there is nothing wonderful in this total after all. When we 

 come to look into it, we only wonder it is not more. 



3. That the worked Jlints were manufactured on the spot. — Many 

 might have been ; certainly not all. We have already disposed of the 

 assertion of the universal preservation of their perfect sharp edges. 

 The sharp edge of a newly-broken flint will cut your fingers — try it ; 

 we have never seen the edges of a flint axe or even a fossil flint flake 

 that would. 



Some, we have said, were probably ice-borne down the annual 

 floods. If Mr. Prestwich be right in his supposition of their being 

 ice-chisels, in some localities where the primitive men had fishing- 

 stations many might be dropped through the holes they were used 

 in breaking out. As to the commercial aspect which M. Gras sug- 

 gests, it would neither make for nor militate against the antiquity of 

 man. We are sorry to say, however, that we have not so high an 

 opinion of the intellectual capacities of these our primitive ancestors 

 — if our ancestors they really were, and perhaps they were not — as 



