Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/58

36 Dr. F. A. Forel chipped out a hatchet of euphotide or gabbro with a hammer formed of a fragment of saussurite. The process occupied an hour and ten minutes, and the subsequent grinding three hours more. He made and ground to an edge a rude hatchet of serpentine in thirty-five minutes.

To return, however, to the manufacture of the flint implements of this country, and more especially to those which are merely flakes submitted to a secondary process of chipping. We have seen that in the gun-flint manufacture the flakes are finally shaped by means of a knapping or trimming hammer and a fixed chisel, which act one against the other, somewhat like the two blades of a pair of shears, and the process adopted by the ancient flint-workers for many purposes must have been to some extent analogous, though it can hardly have been precisely similar. One of the most common forms of flint implements is that to which the name of "scraper" or "thumb-flint" has been given, and which is found in abundance on the Yorkshire Wolds, on the Downs of Sussex, and in many other parts of England and Scotland. The normal form is that of a broad flake chipped to a semicircular edge, usually at the end farthest from the bulb of percussion, the edge being bevelled away from the flat face of the flake, like that of a round-nosed turning-chisel. The name of "scraper" or "grattoir," has been given to these worked flints from their similarity to an instrument in use among the Eskimos for scraping the insides of hides in the course of their preparation; but I need not here enter upon the question of the purpose for which these ancient instruments were used, as we are at present concerned only with the method of their manufacture. I am not aware of any evidence existing as to the method pursued by the Eskimos in the chipping out of their scraping tools: but I think that if, at the present time, we are able to produce flint tools precisely similar to the ancient "scrapers" by the most simple means possible, and without the aid of any metallic appliances, there is every probability that identically the same means were employed of old. Now, I have found by experiment that, taking a flake of flint (made, I may remark, with a stone hammer, consisting of a flint or quartzite pebble held in the hand), and placing it, with the flat face upwards, on a smooth block of stone, I can, by successive blows of the pebble, chip the end of the flake without any difficulty into the desired form. The face of the stone hammer is brought to