TRUE AND FALSE FLINT WEAPONS. 
37 
chalk is covered with a barren sand forming an extensive rabbit 
warren ; there are many delicate flakes on the sand, but they 
are most plentiful where the rabbits have brought them to the 
surface by burrowing below. But the most satisfactory illustra- 
tion of the geological origin and position of the flakes is that 
which I obtained at Spiennes. The valley, half a mile above 
the village, contracts to a narrow gorge and suddenly turns at a 
right angle to the open basin above ; at this point the river, 
when in flood, has had its full force thrown on the slope of the 
left bank, where it has washed the flakes out of the subsoil and 
brought them to the surface. In the narrower part of the 
valley down stream on the steep slope of the hill-side the 
stratum of flakes is exposed in section, and those from the exca- 
vated portion are scattered over the surface of the garden below. 
This section at the top of a garden at the south end of 
Spiennes village shows the following beds in descending order : — 
1. Surface soil of rearranged Loess 2 feet. 
2. Stratum of flint flakes 6 inches thick. 
3. Loess with fractured pieces of angular flint 4 feet. 
4. Pure Loess about 20 feet resting on chalk. 
The layer of flakes may be traced a considerable distance 
along the hill-side. They are in form from three to six inches 
long, broad, irregular in outline, and thin ; showing on one side 
a perfect bulb of percussion and a clean conchoidal fracture, and 
on the other numerous facets ; that they had a geological and 
not an archa3ological origin appears from the regular manner in 
which they are interstratified with the other beds. They bear 
no indications of design, nor any evidence of use. 
Where the soil has been thinned by rain, as on the brows of 
hills, or has been disturbed and removed by river action, there 
the flakes are brought to the surface and have a white coating ; 
while those preserved from atmospheric influence in the subsoil 
have a clean, fresh-looking fracture, with very sharp edges. 
Thus in Devonshire and in Sussex, in Belgium and at Pres- 
signy le Grand in France ; the flakes are most generally found 
at the base of the soil, indicating a geological rather than 
human origin. 
But the flakes speak for themselves. Those which I have col- 
lected form, with the accompanying shattered flints, a large pile 
on my oflice floor in addition to the hampers-full which I have 
stowed away. 
They show a gradation in size from ^ of an inch to 8 
inches in length. A gradation inform from the roughest frac- 
ture to the most perfect flake. The good and the bad are all 
mingled in indiscriminate confusion ; but the most degraded 
