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formed so that they would be suitable for knives by having 
slices cut triangularly off the upper side, to produce two 
cutting edges. We can easily imagine how useful these flint 
knives were to those early people, when we consider the 
various purposes for which we employ steel knives at the 
present time, for although they were incalculably inferior to 
sharp steel, yet to them they must have been a substitute for 
many tools which have been since invented. 
Scrapers may be classed next to knives as the most useful 
and common implements which the aboriginal inhabitants 
of Bridlington employed for various purposes. They are 
both numerous and of a variety of sizes and shapes. 
We may probably assign the first use of them to have 
been to clean raw skins, and to prepare them for clothing, as 
curriers do at the present time. They were also adapted for 
splitting willows, and for stripping off the bark, and cleaning 
them for wicker-work; and I am led to believe they were 
used for this purpose, from my having found a large size, 
and a very small size, in considerable numbers with wicker- 
workers’ tools. 
The thumb flint is a variety of scraper, as the modifica- 
tions of its form is sufficient to prove. Some are quite round, 
others have a projecting side to fit the point of the thumb, 
and extends nearly its length, to give more resistance. 
The most important use to which the scraper has ever 
been employed is, for giving an even, smooth surface to flat 
boards. To accomplish this, the aboriginal people invented 
a plane of flint, which was fixed to the front of a frame of 
wood ; but this has since been changed by the modern 
application of the scraper, which is passed through a flat 
wooden frame, and fixed by a wedge. The original flint 
plane was made flat on the under surface, and elevated, more 
or less, on the upper, and formed straight on one side and 
obliquely on the other that it might scrape or cut as it was 
