DA\^S: AXCIEXT FLINT-USERS OF YORKSHIRE. 
423 
and 6 or 7 inches in width. The manufacture of such large objects 
from so intractable a material is evidence of a very high degi'ee of 
skill and intelligence. The working tools of the Indians are, or 
rather were, valued beyond all price, and nothing would induce them 
to part with a good flaking tool. Now, however, they are rapidly 
becoming a thing of the past, and the art a lost one; the rifle is taking 
the place of the bow and arrow. For boys' practise, and for small game, 
the iron points got from the fur traders are preferred to stone. A 
common jack-knife is worth more to them than all the flint knives 
and saws ever made. Just in the same way the Birmingham brass 
battered-ware kettles, the Yankee tin-ware, and glass whiskey bottles 
have almost totally destroyed their crude art of pottery making.''' 
Sir John Lubbock, in " Pre-historic Times," states that whilst 
scrapers of stone or flint appear to have been universally used in 
Europe for the preparation of skins for wearing apparel, in North 
America, south of the Eskimo region, they are very rare, if they 
occur at all. ]\Ir. Sellers found objects used as scrapers very 
abundant and remarks : " I think it most probable from their close 
resemblance to refuse flakes and chips, they were overlooked by 
early collectors. In the great game districts of the west, both in 
flint workshops and among the waste of the Indian settlements, they 
are much more abundant than arrow-heads, or any other implements, 
\\ith the exception of small flint knives." 
The method of manufacture practised by the Xorth American 
Indians as described above is sufficiently distinct from that of the 
aboriginal Australians. Both are of sufficient interest to be worthy 
of record, and either may have ])een practised by the early natives of 
this country. 
The earliest races of men in Yorkshire are probably still unknown, 
and as already observed, future discoveries may disclose some facts 
which shall reveal the primitive mhabitants who preceded the oldest 
flint users of whom we have such records as have been considered in 
the foregoing pages. Of the characteristics of those of whom we have 
so slight traces only guesses can be made. The earliest inhabitants 
of the county were probably cave dwellers, and perhaps contemporary 
with them the nomadic tribes who have left their implements 
* Catlin. Smithsonian Report, 1885. Pt, I., p. 874. 
