FOSSIL FLINT DIPLEMEXTS. 
27 
Fi-s. 
38, 39.— Forgeries 
Flint Imijlements. 
of 
tusks, or horns, but they use no auxiliary instrument. A monkey may tear 
doMTi a branch of a tree, or cast a stone, but it makes not a club of the one, 
nor trims the other for a sling, an arrow, or a spear. The second, but still a 
most material evidence is afforded by the manner or method of the workman- 
ship employed in producing certain definite forms of implements. Let us first 
take the larger pear-shaped and spear-shaped instruments. A large tlint has 
been here taken from the chalk itself, sometimes from a gray el-heap, and by a 
series of chippings from the outer part or sides the desii'ed poin^-ed, spear- or 
pear-shape is attained. If we see these chippings in a stone barbed arrow- 
head from a Celtic grave or a tumulus, no one disputes its human work- 
manship any more than anyone disputes that 
of one of the well-known Yorkshire forgeries. But 
because it is asserted these fossil implements come 
from stratified deposits of geological age, there 
spring up directly voices which in loud language 
ignore the efforts of the hand of man and attribute 
— too commonly without the slightest knowledge of 
the implements themselves, the natural fracturage of 
flint, or the nature of the circumstances under which 
the geological formations were deposited — tlieir re- 
gular and definite forms to the attrition of the flints 
with each other bv the influence of waves or currents of water. Anyone who 
will take the trouble to chip off a flake from an ordinary flint nodule will see 
that the fractui-e gives a series of 
concentric arcs one beyond the other, 
the convexity of which always points 
in the direction in which the blow 
was struck. Anyone looking at one 
of these fossil implements will see 
the fracture of the separate flakes 
plainly marked out by these lines of 
concentric arcs and undulations, and 
will as plainly see that these flakings have all been made by blows given at 
the sides, and are broken out, because the lines of fracture all point from the 
outer edges or sides towards the central ridge (see fig. 1, p. 405, vol. iii., or 
figs. 5 — ^9, 16, 17, vol. iv.) just as they woiJd do if wrought by the hand of man 
into a designed and given shape, but as they never woidd be from casual and 
chance blows, which would necessarily strike in all directions just as accidentally 
might happen. The chippings of the flints, if by design, would be regular and 
systematic, which they are ; if by natural causes, irregular and unsystematic^ 
which they are not. 
Moreover, the flints of which these instruments are made have been selected — 
those of a firm unfractured substance have been chosen. Everyone acquainted 
with chalk districts or pebble-beaches knows how few flints are firm and solid 
compared with those which present more or less numerous fine divisional planes 
of fissure, and how readily these latter fall to pieces at a slight blow of the 
hammer. We find none of these fossil instruments formed of the shatterable 
flints, which, if accident formed these instniments, should not have been ex- 
cluded from the formative chipping processes ; on the other hand, we find 
these fossil instruments formed of remarkably liard and compact nodules, such 
as were likely at most only to have been battered and pitted by the waves, but 
which could only have been faked by definite and appropriate blows struck by 
the hand of man. 
We need not again speak of the design exhibited in the fossil flint knives, arrow- 
heads and javelin-pomts, about which no doubt could arise in the minds of those 
40.— Concentric Lines of Fracture in Flints. 
