Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/343



of the purposes to which flint flakes were applied appears to have been that of boring holes in various materials. Portions of stags' horns, destined to serve either as hammers, or as sockets for hatchets of stone, had either to be perforated or to have recesses bored in them; and holes in wood were, no doubt, requisite for many purposes, though in this country we have but few wooden relics dating back to the time when flint was the principal if not the only material for boring-tools. To form some idea of the character of the objects in the preparation of which such tools were necessary, we cannot do better than refer to the vivid picture of ancient life placed before us by the discoveries in the Swiss Lake-dwellings. Besides perforated stone axes and hammers, such as have been already described in these pages, we find stag's horn and wooden hafts or helves, with holes and sockets bored in them, plates of stone, teeth of animals, bone and stag's horn instruments, and wooden knife handles pierced for suspension, and portions of bark perforated, so as to serve like corks for floating fishing-nets.

Even in the caverns of the Reindeer Period of the South of France we find the reindeer horns with holes bored through them in regular rows, and delicate needles of hard bone with exquisitely formed eyes drilled through them—one of which has also been found in Kent's Cavern—as well as teeth, shells and fossils perforated for suspension as ornaments or amulets. So beautifully are the eyes in these ancient needles formed, that I was at one time much inclined to doubt the possibility of their having been drilled by means of flint flakes; but the late Mons. E. Lartet demonstrated the feasibility of this process, by himself drilling the eye of a similar needle with a flint borer, found in one of the French caves. I have myself bored perfectly round and smooth holes through both stag's horn and wood with flint flakes, and when a