SMlXn — FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN THE " OTLE " CAYE, TENBY. 49 
rived at from a general view of them scattered upon the table, whether 
found in " the Oyle," at Bed Hill, or elsewhere, is that these chips 
are the rejected refuse of the workshop. " On this spot," the 
thoughtful observer is disposed to say, " some weapons or implements 
were fabricated on some one or more occasions ; and while the per- 
fected ones were carried away, these inartistic though somewhat 
shapely fragments were left on the floor where they fell, and at length 
became buried, partly by the tramp of animals, and partly by acci- 
dents of daily human life." I feel sure of this conclusion, not only 
because most of the flint chips which we have in collections (as that 
handful, for instance, in the British jMuseum, which are said to have 
come from Arabia) are in reality nothing but primary splinters, which 
have never received a second perfecting stroke or trimming from the 
hand, but also from the following argument : — 
Assuming these to be mis-shapen chips struck ofl" on the spot, would 
there not be found among so many one or two perfected specimens 
of the tools or weapons assigned ? This is very probable — almost 
certain ; but not so probable as that some broken specimen of the 
tools, broken in the process of completion, would occur here and 
there. And so it proves in this case ; for among these seventy-three 
specimens, there are eight broken pieces which have received much 
manipulation, and haYe heads elaborately rounded oft", by removing 
small conchoidal scales. And further, the lumps of flint which have 
been split up as long as they would yield flukes strengthen the argu- 
ment; for they, too, are left behind commingled with the rest of the 
abandoned fragments. 
Secondly, by what race of men were these implements fabricated? 
The reporter, supposing these chips to be ancient, has no hesitation 
in ascribing them to the same natives of Britain by whom the tumuli 
on the Kidgeway above were raised, and wlio buried with their dead 
the flint arrow-heads found within those mounds. Xo other suppo- 
sition obviously needs to he entertained. 
But who were this race of men ? The world say, "Britons, to be 
sure ; these are British barrows, and those vases on your shelf are 
British urns that you obtained from them." 
AVell,let us suppose so for a while. But surely,. if such is the case, 
these descendants of the British who live around "the Oyle" and 
the barrows here in AYales, and who certainly are in possession of much 
ancient literature, while the Saxons brought us next to none, would 
be able to inform us whether their ancestors ever used flint tools or 
weapons in early days, especially as the records relate to the very 
first possession of the island by the race of Adam. Led by this 
thought, I have corresponded with the ablest Welsh archaeologists, 
and have been favoured with full replies ; but all deny that their 
forefathers ever used anything but bronze and iron for war or in the 
chase, but say that there is a notice or two in their very early docu- 
ments of the use of flint knives for sacrificial purposes only. This 
admission, however, proves nothing ; for other races of men, — the 
Jews, for instance, — while they certainly had tools of metal, uni- 
VOL. VI. * H 
