Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/337

Rh some of the ancient "scrapers" is manifest. Another strike-a-light flint, which I bought at a stall in Trier, is about 2 inches long by 1 inches broad, and is made from a flat flake, trimmed to a nearly square edge at the butt-end, and to a very flat arc at the point, both the trimmed edges being of precisely the same character as those of scrapers. I find, moreover, that by working such a flint and a steel or briquet together, much the same bruising of the edge is produced as that apparent on some of the old "scrapers." I come, therefore, to the conclusion, that a certain proportion of these instruments were in use, not for scraping hides like the others, but for scraping iron pyrites, and not improbably, in later days, even iron or steel for procuring fire. Were they used for such a purpose we can readily understand why they should so often present a bruising of the edge and an irregularity of form. We can also find a means of accounting for their great abundance.

Looking at the question from a slightly different point of view, this method of solution receives additional support. Everyone will, I think, readily concede that, putting for the moment pyrites out of the question, the inhabitants of this country must have been acquainted with the method of producing fire by means of flint and steel or iron, at all events so long ago as when their intercourse with the Romans commenced, if not at an even earlier period. We may, in any case, assume that flints have been in use as fire-producing agents for something like 2,000 years, and that consequently the number of them that have thus served must be enormous. What has become of them all? They cannot, like some antiquities, be "only now rare because they were always valueless," for in their nature they are almost indestructible. Many, no doubt, were mere irregular lumps of flint, broken from time to time to produce such an edge as would scrape the steel; but is it not in the highest degree probable that many were of the same class as those sold for the same purpose at the present day—flakes chipped into a more or less scraper-like form at one end?

There is yet another argument. In many instances these circular-ended flints, when found upon the surface, have a comparatively fresh and unweathered appearance; and, what is more, have the chipped parts stained by iron-mould. In some cases there are particles of iron, in an oxidized condition, still adherent. Such iron marks, especially on flint which has weathered white, may, and indeed commonly do, arise from the passage of harrows