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Rh two previous flakes, as in the case of the one represented in fig. 94. In this instance, the section is pentagonal; the flat under-surface remaining always the same, but the upper side showing four facets.

Easy as it may seem to make such flakes as these, a little practice will convince anyone who attempts to do so, that a certain knack is required; and a gun-flint maker at Brandon told me that it took him two years to acquire the art. It is also necessary to be careful in selecting the flint. It is therefore evident that these flakes, simple as they may appear, are always the work of man. To make one, the flint must be held firmly, and then a considerable force must be applied, either by pressure or by blows, repeated three or four times, but at least three, and given in certain slightly different directions, with a certain definite force; conditions which could scarcely occur by accident; so that a flint flake, simple as it may seem to the untrained eye, is to the antiquary as sure a trace of man as the footprint in the sand was to Robinson Crusoe.



It is hardly necessary to say that flakes have a sharp cutting edge on each side, and might therefore be at once used as knives, as in fig. 96, which represents a North American two-bladed knife: they are indeed so named by some archæologists; but it seems to me more convenient to call them simply flakes, and to confine the name of