M. GliAS' ATTACK OX THE FLINT-IMPLEMEXTS. 
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 says, 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 nmnbev foimd 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 which 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. 
E«ally 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 flints 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. Tf IMr. 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 
iu breaking out. As to the commercial aspect which M. Gras sug- 
gests, it would neither make for nor militate against the antiquity of 
man. AVe 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 — aa 
