18 
the rounded angles of some of the implements may have been occasioned by 
use, but he qualifies his language in a manner due to his high position when 
he says. “ Out of more than 100 flint instruments which I obtained at 
St Acheul, not a few had their edges more or less fractured or worn, either 
by use as instruments before they were buried in the gravel, or by bang 
rolled in theriver’s bed.” (Antiquity of Man. p. 113.) And Mr. Evans ex- 
presses his doubts in much the same manner on the individual specimens ; 
of one he says, “its angles are slightly waterwom, and the edges worn away, 
either by friction among other stones in the gravel, or by use (btone 
Implements p. 485) ; and of others, “ They bear evident marks of abrasion 
and bruising at the ends, such as may have resulted from their use as hammer- 
stones” (p. 489) ; and again, “Many appear to have their edges chipped by 
use” (p 526). And on such dubious marks of use, we find m his recent 
work the oft-reiterated assertion, that the Drift implements show marks of 
wear. It is a sufficient answer to this sort of evidence to reply that the 
rouo-hly fractured gravel in which these symmetrical chipped flints are 
embedded, beam the same marks of wear, of bruising, and chipping, as are 
found on the assumed implements. . 
The so-called worked flints of Pressigny are so abundant that they impede 
the cultivation of the land ; they abound in the soil in every direction and 
the concurrent testimony of many observers is, that notwithstanding their 
wonderful abundance, they show no marks of having been used by man.^ 
4 Their Number— Oi the flint tools at Hoxne, Mr. Frere said, T e 
number of them was so great that the man who carried on the brick-field 
told me that before he was aware of their being objects of curiosity, he ha 
emptied basketfuls of them into the ruts of the adjoining road. At the 
newly discovered finds on the Little Ouse, hundreds are procured from a 
single gravel-pit, and these pits dot the sides of the valley for eight or ten 
miles At Abbeville, M. de Perthes writes, “Any one visiting me may 
count them by thousands, and yet I have kept only those which presented 
some interest. From those beds which I have called “ Celtic,’ I have seen 
them drawn in barrows to metal the neighbouring roads— one would have 
thouoht a shower of them had fallen from the sky.” At St. Acheul, in 
about three acres of land, certainly more than 3,000 tools have been ex- • 
burned, which is equal to 640,000 in a square mile, and as these beds are now 
proved to extend more than twenty square miles along the valley of the 
Somme, if equally productive, there must be 12,800,000 in this smaU area ; 
the present population of France is less than 200 to a square mile, and these 
implements are assumed to have been lost by a race of hunters, when from 
the nature of their pursuits the country could have sustained only a very 
sparse population. It has been calculated that 800 acres of hunting-ground 
produce only as much food as half an acre of arable land, and on this 
* Mr. Evans says, “ At Pressigny, so far as I could see, the large hvres de 
beurre show no sign of use or wear.” ( Brit Association , 186 .) 
