Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/520

498, is very striking. The decomposed flint pebbles in the cliff at Southbourne-on-Sea are well known, and belong to a still more recent geological period. There is some difficulty in ascertaining the exact loss of weight incurred during the process of alteration; but I find that a flake of this porous white flint, which, when dry, weighed one hundred and twenty-nine grains, gained, by immersion for half an hour in water, thirteen grains, so that, taking the specific gravity of flint at about 2⋅6, and assuming that the flake was originally perfectly non-absorbent, the loss would appear to have been about one-fifth of the original weight.

But to return from this digression to the subject of the instruments, of which several belonging to the same class as Fig. 390 have been found in Kent's Cavern. Some of them are pointed at only one extremity, and that usually the point of the original flake, the bulb-end being left more or less obtuse.

A remarkably elegant instrument of this class (No. 3,869) is shown in Fig. 391. It has been made from a ridged or carinated flake, though having three facets at the butt-end, and a little secondary working on one side; and at the butt this external face has been left in its original condition. The inner face of the flake, however, which is shown in the figure, has been almost entirely removed by secondary working, extending from the edges to the middle of the blade, while the edges have again been re-touched, so as to make them even and sharp. At the butt-end it is chisel-like in form. It was found, on July 4th, 1868, at a depth of 2 feet in the cave-earth, beneath stalagmite 2 feet 8 inches thick. Several other instruments of the same kind have been found in the cavern. Some of them are even longer than those figured.

These instruments so closely resemble in character the long flakes of obsidian and other silicious stones in use, as javelin heads, among the Admiralty Islanders and other savage tribes until the present day, that one is tempted to assign to them a similar purpose. It is possible that they may have been merely knives, or they may have served for both purposes, like the arrow-heads of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. These English specimens may be compared with some of the lance-heads from the cave of Laugerie Haute, belonging to the Age of Solutré, but they are not quite so dexterously chipped.