7 
of drainage, road-cuttings, and sea-embankments ; during which time 
hampers full of shattered flints were brought to me by the workmen, of 
which about 5 per cent, might be said to be typical flakes and cores more or 
less perfect, the remainder being crushed flints of undefinable forms. This 
trail of shattered flints may be roughly estimated to embrace an area of at 
least 200 square miles of country. It cannot surely be said that a few 
scattered savages required a manufactory of such a size for the shaping of 
their stone implements, and therefore it has been sometimes assumed that 
the widely-scattered flakes are the lost arrow-heads of the Palaeolithic 
hunters ; but this fancy vanishes before the consideration that the small pro- 
portion of arrow-headed flakes to the larger mass of broken flints is every- 
where nearly the same. Continuing the survey of the geographical position 
of the flakes, we find them scattered over most of the headlands from Morte 
Point to the Land’s End, at Hartland, Budehaven, Stepper Point, and for 
three miles along the shore of Padstow Harbour, at Trevose Head, Trevalga 
Island, Newquay Head, the Gannel, St. Agnes, St. Ives, and St. Just. On 
the south coast of Cornwall the flakes are rare, but they are abundant over a 
large portion of the table-land of the Lizard Peninsula. But the flakes are 
not confined to the coast-line : they have been found at three places on the 
granite plateau of Dartmoor from 1,200 to 1,400 feet above the sea ; on 
barren hills which have never been cultivated between Launceston and 
Bodmin ; by works of drainage on the high lands of Davidstow ; on the 
hills of Constantine ; and even on the uncultivated crofts of the Scilly Isles. 
If we now compare these roughly-broken flints with the beautifully-formed, 
barbed, and delicately chipped flint arrow-heads of the Neolithic age, we are 
at once struck with the lack of evidence which they present of human work- 
manship. The larger portions are simply crushed and shattered pieces of 
flin t, : a diligent search would result in the finding of some rough untrimmed 
flakes ; and from the pick of the mass some thin, well-formed flakes of the 
arrow-headed type would be obtained, and it is on these alone, to the 
exclusion of the imperfect specimens, that the assumed evidence of their 
human manufacture rests* It has been said that the flint flakes and refuse 
chips of Croyde indicate the site of an ancient manufactory of flint arrow- 
heads and flake knives. I can discover no evidence in support of such an 
opinion, but, on the contrary, the evidence that the fractured flints are 
formed by natural causes appears abundant and conclusive. 
1. There is a gradation in form, from the very roughly-fractured flint, so 
rude that it cannot be ascribed to human workmanship, up to the most 
perfectly-formed flake of the arrow-headed type. 
2. There is a gradation in size, from a flake so minute that it could not 
possibly be used as a weapon, up to the full-size arrow and javelin heads. 
The good and the bad are all mingled together in one chaotic mass. 
This pell-mell mixture of all kinds of flakes and broken flints is perfectly 
consistent with their being formed by natural causes, but utterly incompatible 
with their manufacture by man. The most degraded savage would not cast 
away his perfectly-formed implements with the refuse chips. 
