Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/40

18 they were formed by means of red-hot pincers, and many asserted that they were made in mills. The best account of the manufacture with which he was acquainted, was that collected by his brother, and published in the Hanoverian Magäzine for the year 1772. At a later date the well-known mineralogist Dolomieu gave an account of the process in the Mémoires de l'lnstitut National des Sciences, and M. Hacquet, of Leopol, in Galicia, published a pamphlet on the same subject. The accounts given by both these authors correspond most closely with each other, and also with the practice of the present day, though the French process differs in some respects from the English. This has been well described by Dr. Lottin. The flints best adapted for the purpose of the manufacture are those from the chalk. They must, however, be of fair size, free from flaws and included organisms, and very homogeneous in structure. They are usually procured by sinking small shafts into the ground until a band of flints of the right quality is reached, along which low horizontal galleries, or "burrows," as they are called, are worked. For success in the manufacture a great deal is said to depend upon the condition of the flint as regards the moisture it contains, those which have been too long exposed upon the surface becoming intractable, and there being also a difficulty in working those that are too moist. A few blows with the hammer enable a practised flint-knapper to judge whether the material on which he is at work is in the proper condition or no. Some of the Brandon workmen, however, maintain that though a flint which has been some time exposed to the air is harder than one recently dug, yet that it works equally well, and they say further, that the object in keeping the flints moist is to preserve the black colour from fading, black gun-flints being most saleable.

A detailed account, by Mr. Skertchly, of the manufacture of gun-flints, with an essay on the connection between Neolithic art and the gun-flint trade, forms an expensive memoir of the geological survey, published in 1879; but it seems well to retain the following short account of the process.

The tools required are few and simple : —

1. A flat-faced blocking, or quartering hammer, from one to