TRUE AND FALSE FLINT WEAPONS. 
35 
flints were abundantly disclosed. At Spiennes, three miles south- 
east from Mons, where 400 ‘‘ flint implements ” were discovered, 
I found the flakes large, thin, and broad, in a stratum six inches 
thick and two feet under the surface of the soil ; I traced them 
for half a mile along a sloping cliff formed in a gorge of the 
river, and the soil around teemed with similar forms. In the 
valley of the Somme, at St. Acheul and Menchecourt, the flakes 
were delicately thin, long, and sharp at the edges. Crossing the 
Paris basin to its southern rim, I drove up the valley of the 
Claise to Grand Pressigny. The hill-sides were often cut into 
steep cliffs, and debris of the chalk, mixed with much granitic 
gravel from the central highlands, formed a soil full of split flints, 
flakes, “axes,” or “ploughshares,” or “cores,” Through the 
courtesy of Dr. Leveille, I was shown a vast number of “ imple- 
ments ” ranged around three rooms in his house, and the walks 
of his garden were bordered with innumerable “axes.” My 
first search in a ploughed field produced more flakes and axes 
than I could carry; but “ the marvufactovy ” at La Douchetterie 
lay full three miles to the south, where similar flints are so 
numerous that “ M. Brouillet collected in his cart, in less than 
an hour, such a number that they weighed above 500 kilo- 
grammes ” * (about half a ton). 
Southward on the Oolite hills no flakes have been discovered ; 
but further south, in the departments of the Charente-Inferieure 
and Dordogne, the chalk becomes largely developed and the 
flakes again become most abundant. 
In Sicily and in Syria, on the desolate shores of the Dead 
Sea, in Arabia Petrsea, and on the Algerian Sahara, the flakes 
are widely scattered, and in all these places found in intimate 
relationship to cretaceous strata. 
But the flakes are often discovered in great numbers far away 
from the chalk and on the oldest sedimentary rocks. In such 
cases it is commonly asserted that they must have been carried 
there by man. Around Barnstaple, by works of drainage and 
cuttings for roads, I have traced them over an area twenty miles 
long and ten miles wide, and found them at intervals from 
Hartland point, along the north coast of Cornwall, to the Land’s 
End, and even on the granite islets of Scilly ; but here the 
evidence of their drifted origin can be read at a glance. 
The sketch on the following page shows a section of these 
beds on the north side of Bideford Bay, and the position of the 
flakes at the base of the soil. 
This so-called raised beach is composed of drifted materials, 
much of which is foreign to the rocks on which it rests. At the 
base of the drift is a large boulder of granite, with others of por- 
“ Memoirs of Anthropological Society,” vol. ii. p. 323. 
