Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/339

Rh portion of one side has also been trimmed. At the end, and along some parts of the sides, this edge is worn quite smooth, and rounded by friction, and there are traces of similar wear at the butt-end. In a second grave in the same barrow there lay, behind the back, two jet buttons and a similar pyrites and flint. There can, I think, be no reasonable doubt of their having been, in these instances, fire-producing implements, used in the manner indicated in the annexed figure. The finding of the two materials together, in two separate instances, in both of which the pyrites and the flint presented the same forms and appearance, establishes the fact of their connection; and it is hard to imagine any other purpose for which pyrites could be scraped by flint except that of producing fire. Moreover, in another barrow on Crosby Garrett Fell, Westmoreland, Canon Greenwell found a piece of iron ore (oxidized pyrites) held in the hand of a skeleton, and a long thick flake of flint, evidently a "flint and steel." Fig. 224.—Method of using Pyrites and "Scraper" for Striking a Light.

It cannot have been merely for the purpose of producing a paint or colour that they were brought together, as though the outer crust of a nodule of pyrites might, if ground, give a dull red pigment, yet the inner freshly-broken face would not do so; and, if it would, the colour would be more readily procured by grinding on a flat stone than by scraping. It would be interesting to compare these objects with the pyrites and pebbles in use among the Fuegians, who employ dried moss or fungus by way of tinder, but appear to find some difficulty in producing fire. The Eskimos and some North American tribes also obtain fire from pyrites.

Sir Wollaston Franks has called my attention to another half