FLINT FLAKES OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
181 
flakes that some archaeologists pronounce as being of the most 
primitive form of human implement, are found in such abund- 
ance in the subsoil of the western promontory, while the more 
perfect flint tools, such as have been found at St. Achieul, Abbe- 
ville, Hoxne, and in the drifts and caves of Europe ; thus placing 
the more complex and perfected structure at a date, geologically 
speaking, far more early than the simple flake, a fact that is 
scarcely consistent with the latter being the earlier or more 
primitive form of the two. 
In this point, it appears to me that those archaeologists are at 
fault. My reason for so thinking is, that we find flakes, such as 
those found in Devon and Cornwall, still in present use by the 
native tribes of Western America ; while I am not aware that 
the most degraded race is so far imperfect in skill, at present, 
as to use flint implements of the Abbeville type. The reason 
appears to me to be simply this, that the flint flakes represent 
parts only of more perfect tools, some being the heads of arrows, 
others being imbedded in wood so as to represent knives or 
crude saws, others being the armour of small javelins, and so on. 
To suppose any of them as being arrow-heads is to assume 
that they were used in connection with a stringed bow,* an 
implement that evidently required a higher degree of thought 
to invent than either the hatchet or spear. Now, as arrows were 
in use, and retained as instruments of chase and war until 
a late period in this country, it must be tolerably certain that 
flint was retained, owing to the scarcity of metal, until long 
after the use of iron was known. In a Fougou, or subterranean 
artificial cave, recently explored by the Natural History Society 
of Penzance, in one of the galleries was found a flaked flint 
implement alongside of an iron spear-head (?) and some pottery. 
Some observers have questioned the adaptation of these sharp 
flints as having been designed for the points of arrows, because 
they are the result of single blows in their separation from the 
core, and bear no evidence of having been afterwards touched to 
render them more perfect ; while we find in some places flint 
* Mr. J. K. Lord, in his Naturalist in British Columbia , says : 11 The 
Indian how is a masterpiece of skilful manufacture ; its elasticity does not 
in any way depend on the wood used in its construction, hut on the elastic 
ligament procured from the fore leg of the elk ; this is affixed to the 
wooden frame-work of the how by a kind of glue made from the skin of 
the 1 white ’ salmon, a glue when hardened, resisting the influence of wet 
to redissolve it. This elastic hack to the wood acts as would an india-ruhher 
hand ; the how when hent takes an arrow about a yard in length, which it 
propels with a force equal, for a short range, to that of a rifle hullet. When 
an Indian shoots, five or six arrows are held in the left hand, and as the 
string, which is made of tendon, is hauled hack, the right hand brings with 
it an arrow ; this one is fired, another is seized, and as rapidly as one could 
reasonably count, the six arrows held in the left hand are discharged.” — 
Vol. II. p. 252. 
