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 unwi-ought at the broad end, but ai-e 
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 pui'poses 
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 ia the remotest 
regions. But the same definiteness of pm-pose or applicability is not evident 
in the larger and pear-shaped instruments to which we first di-ew 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. 
P.g. 14.— Stone Celt set in portion of Stag's-hom, 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 lor the pui-pose 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 quadi-upeds, it 
should be on those of the great herbivora, and not those of the carnivora that 
we should expect to find them. 
Professor Owen in his " British Fossil Mammalia," has noticed the injury 
