And as it is absolutely impossible to date the "Stone Period" from any fixed era, so also serious difficulties attend every attempt to define the exact era of its close. Stone weapons unquestionably continued to be used throughout the whole range of the "Bronze Period"-the second period, that is, during which weapons were generally made of bronze, and which corresponds with the epoch of the earliest traditions of Gaul, and with the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Homeric civilisations. And again, the use of stone weapons was still further prolonged into the third or "Iron Period," when bronze generally was superseded by iron; and, far advanced in this " Iron Period," even so late as the eighth century of our own era, lances and arrows of stone were found in the hands of the Normans.

The weapons of the "Stone Period" were made almost exclusively of silex. A stone less hard than flint would have failed to have produced satisfactory results, when subjected to the process of treatment which alone was at the disposal of primitive man. He probably selected a stone which showed a natural tendency towards the form that he desired it should ultimately assume: then, employing a second stone as his working-tool, by a rapid succession of little sharp blows, he struck off splinters from the first stone, until his work was accomplished, and the desired weapon-arrow or lance, knife or axe was perfected so far as he could make it perfect. It must not be forgotten, that when this primitive armourer struck his blows on the stone that was being made into a weapon, the splinters which flew off did not proceed from the part of the stone that had been struck, but from the side of the stone opposite to that which had received the blows, and consequently from the side which the operator could not see while he was working. It was necessary, therefore, for him to supply the place of sight by a precision and certainty of touch which were indeed extraordinary. Workmen such

as these, savages as in so many respects we must consider them to have been, gave signs already of that instinctive and patient ingenuity which is one of the most honourable endowments of the human race. It is also evident that between different individuals of these workmen there were distinct gradations of capacity, skill, and experience, relatively as great as those which in our own times may exist between artists of various degrees of rank.

At first sight apparently uniform in their excessive simplicity, after observant, thoughtful, and prolonged study these

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Fig. 1.-ARMS OF THE STONE PERIOD.

productions of the primeval flint-armourer are found to possess certain distinctive and characteristic qualities, by which they may be assigned each to their own country and era, precisely as the same thing may be done in the case of the most elaborate works of art. Antiquaries also have learned to declare with confidence that certain countries generally furnished superior workmen, while the productions of other countries were almost always of an inferior order; and they have even succeeded in dividing that vast space of time which preceded the deluge of Noah into periods of decadence and renaissance."

Without attempting, and indeed without any desire now

to carry further these preliminary considerations, we proceed to examine some characteristic typical examples of the various

weapons of the Stone Period." Their forms may be clearly understood from engraved representations; notwithstanding that in consequence of the complication of their lines, the inevitable result of the process of their manufacture, an intelligible description of them may fairly be pronounced impossible. The group, Fig. 1, contains seven examples. . Of these, Nos. 1 and 6 severally represent an axe-head and an arrow. Now, we may ask by what means flint axes and arrows such as these become hafted? There can be no question as to whether the flint arrow-head should be made with a socket, like an arrow-head of metal, for fixing it to the shaft; for, even if the workman had succeeded in piercing a socket-hole in the flint for the reception of the shaft, the walls or enclosing sides of this socket in the flint would certainly have burst at the first shock. The only available process that would be successful, was the same that still is employed by those races who continue to use arrows as missile weapons, and who arm their arrows with tips of pointed stone; that is, the ancient stone arrow-heads were set in shafts that had been split at the end in order to receive them, and then the shaft with the arrow-head within its grasp was bound round with bands of skin or fibre, as in Fig. 1, No. 6. Of the axes some evidently have been made for the purpose of being fixed to the end of a handle or haft; but in others the equally evident intention was that they should be grasped in the hand without any haft, when in use. On the side where they are to be held these last have received a polish, so that the hand might not be hurt; and sometimes they have a hole through which the thumb may be passed in order to give a firmer grasp. Examples of the earliest hafted axes are represented in the wood-cuts, Fig. 1, No. 2; and Fig. 2, Nos. 8, 9, and 10. It is possible also that the antediluvians

may have been acquainted with many of those ingenious methods for attaching their stone weapons to handles, prevalent at a later period, which savage tribes still employ in order to obtain for the two parts of their weapons a solid coherence. We shall have occasion hereafter to treat more fully of the curious and interesting processes, to which here it is sufficient thus briefly to refer.

If it should be asked whether the art of polishing stones was known at the remote period of the antediluvian armourers, the reply would be that almost beyond all doubt it was then known. Such a simple knowledge assuredly was not beyond

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Fig. 2.-ARMS OF THE STONE Period.

the intelligence of workmen, who daily executed much more delicate operations than the imparting a polished surface to smoothed stones. However this may be, the smooth stone hatchets that were common amongst the earliest Celts and their contemporaries, are not found amongst the relics of the still earlier antediluvian era: but this circumstance may be explained in a manner which probably will excite some surprise, since the absence of smooth stone hatchets in the most remote ages must be attributed to the fact that the superior utility, for many purposes, of the irregular and splintered weapon was then known and understood. The smoothed axe

might be the more pleasing in appearance, but the rough one was the better in use.

On this side of the last geological revolution, and consequently in that period of terrestrial history of which we now proceed to treat—but still, before the dawn of historical ages, that is, before the time (uncertain enough) in which definite human tradition commences-man is found to have been armed in the same fashion that he had been before the flood, the great revolution in question. Post-diluvian man comes the scene without any advance in knowledge. To him, as to his predecessors, the use of metals is as a sealed book. He continues, after the fashion of what to him was the olden time, to hunt and to make war, equipped and armed with knives and axes and arrows of flint.

upon

M. Boucher de Perthes, who speaks with the highest authority on all points connected with the weapons of the "Stone Period," positively affirms that weapons of the same class, all of them formed of silex, may be assigned without hesitation, some to the ages anterior to the flood, and others to the post-diluvian pre-historic era. The former, he says, may always be recognised by their surfaces exhibiting the traces of minute splinters of every variety of shape; while, on the other hand, the latter may be distinguished by the evident fact that they were fashioned by knocking off splinters of a larger size, and always elongated in their form. It might also be added, apparently, that in the second section of the 'Stone Period" the weapons have a much neater outline, and that they already indicate (or, at any rate, that they suggest) the contours which prevailed during the "Bronze Period "-typical contours that are universally well known. Thus, the objects represented in Fig. 2, No. 12, are seen at a glance to be the heads of either arrows or javelins. It must be added that these examples belong to the least remote period of the pre-historic age.

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