FLINT IMPLEMENTS AND WEAPONS, believed to have been used by the primitive inhabitants, have from time to time, in more or less number, been turned up by the plow and the spade, dug out from ancient graves, fortifications and dwelling-places, or fished up from the beds of lakes and rivers, In almost every country of Europe. They do not differ, in any material respect, from the flint implements and weapons still in use among uncivilized tribes in Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the Pacific ocean. The weapons of most frequent occurrence are arrow-heads (see ELF'-Auitows), spear-points, dagger-blades, and ax-heads or Celts (q.v.). The more common imple ments are knives, chisels, rasps, wedges, and thin curved or semi-circular plates, to which the name of "scrapers" has been given. There is great variety, as well in the size as in the shape, even of articles of the same kind. There is equal variety in the amount of skill or labor expended in their manufacture. In some instances, the flint has been roughly fashioned into something like the required form by two or three blows; in others, it has been laboriously chipped into the wished-for shape, which is often one of no little elegance. In yet another class of cases, the flint, after being duly shaped, has been ground smooth, or has even received as high a polish as could be given by a modern lapidary. Examples of all the varieties of flint weapons and implements will be found in the museum, in the museum of the royal Irish academy at Dub lin, in the museum of the society of antiquaries of Scotland at Edinburgh, and above all, in the museum of the royal society of antiquaries at Copenhagen, which is especi ally rich in this class of remains. Representations of interesting or characteristic types may be seen in the Catalogue of the Archo'ological Museum at Edinburgh in 1856 (Edin. 1859); in Mr. 'Wilde.'s Catalogue of Antiquities in t14 Museum of the Royal Irish Academy (Dub]. in Worsaae's iVordiske Oldsager i det Kongelige Huseura i KjobenAavn(Copen. 1859); and in M. Frederic Troyon's _Habitations Lacustres (Lausanne, 1860).
Geological discoveries have recently invested flint implements with a new interest. At Abbeville, at Amiens, at Paris, and elsewhere on the continent, flint weapons, fashioned by the hand of man, have been found along with remains of extinct species of the elephant, the rhiuocerous, and other mammals, in undisturbed beds of those deposits of sand, gravel, and clay to which geologists have given the name of " the drift." They so far resemble the flint implements and weapons found on the surface of the earth, but are generally of a larger size, of ruder workmanship, and less varied in shape. They have been divided into three classes—round-pointed; and sharp-pointed, both being chipped to :1 sharp edge, so as to cut or pierce only at the pointed end; and oval-shaped, with a cutting edge all round. The first and second classes vary in length
from about 4 in. to 8 or 9 in.; the third class is generally about 4 or 5 in. long, but examples have been found of no more than 2 in., and of as _much as 8 or 9 in. In no instance has any flint implement discovered in the drift been found either polished or ground. The French antiquary, M. Boucher de Perthes, was the first to call attention to these very interesting remains, in his Antiguita altiques ct AntNiluriennes (Paris, 1847-57), But it has since been remembered that implements of the same kind were found in a similar position at Hoxne, in Suffolk, along with remains of some gigantic animal, in 1797, and at Gray's Inn Lane, in London, along with remains of an elephant, in 1715. Both these English examples are still preserved—the first in the museum of the society of antiquaries at London, the second in the British museum, and they are pre cisely similar in every respect to the examples more recently found in France.
To what age these remains should be assigned, is a question on which geology seems scarcely yet prepared to speak with authority. But, in the words of 31r. Alin Evans, in his essay on " Flint Implements in the Drift," in the Archteologia, vol. xxxviii. (Loud. 1860), " thus much appears to be established beyond a doubt, that in a period of anti• quity remote beyond any of which we have hitherto found traces, this portion of the globe was peopled by man; and that mankind has here witnessed some of those geological changes by which the so-called diluvial beds were deposited. Whether these were the result of some violent rush of waters, such as may have taken place when ' the foun tains of the great deep were broken up, and the 'windows of heaven were opened,' or whether of a more gradual action, similar in character to some of those now in opera tion along the course of our brooks, streams, and rivers, may be matter of dispute. Under any circumstances, this great fact remains indisputable, that at Amiens, land which is now 160 ft. above the sea, and 90 ft. above the Somme, has, since the exist ence of man, been submerged under fresh water, and an aqueous deposit from 20 to 30 ft. in thickness, a portion of which, at all events, must have subsided from tranquil water, has been formed upon it; and this, too, has taken place in a country the level of which is now stationary, and the face of which has been little altered since the days when the Gauls and the Romans constructed their sepulchres in the soil overlying the drift which contains these relics of a far earlier race of men."