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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 93.

I ] PREHISTORIC ANTIQUITIES 93 of earth or sandy gravel on the floors of caves or rock-shelters, associated with the ashes and charcoal of hearths and lumps of ruddle or haematite. Rude paintings made with ruddle on the walls and roofs of the caves seem to be coeval with the implements. A few specimens were found in tumuli con- taining entire skeletons and coarse pottery. Mr. Carlleyle does not state whether the pottery was hand-made or turned on the wheel. The little implements, which vary in length from half an inch to an inch and a half, comprise delicately made arrow-heads, crescents, and sundry pointed and rhom- boidal forms. The material is frequently chalcedony. Exactly similar miniature implements occur at several stations in England, and in the valley of the Meuse in Belgium. The numerous specimens excavated by the Rev. R. A. Gatty from sand-drifts at Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire are remarkable for their extremely minute size, the smallest being no more than three-sixteenths of an inch in length. The Scunthorpe sites appear to be, like the Vindhyan ones, the floors of dwellings. The occurrence of these miniature implements in immense numbers on the sites of huts indicates that they must have served purposes of ordinary life; but what those purposes were it is difficult to determine. Most probably they were used by being fitted into wooden holders and handles of various kinds, and so made to serve a great variety of functions. In some parts of Australia the natives still employ, or recently employed, minute flakes of flint as arrow-heads, knives, &c., by fitting them to wooden holders with the aid of strongly adhesive resin. The manufacture of the 'pygmy flints 'evidently extended over a long period, and there is reason to believe that the earlier examples go back to the beginnings of the Neolithic Age. It is possible that they are the memorials of the survivors of palaeolithic men, working as the slaves or depen- dents of the more advanced neolithic races . If this view should find support, the common belief that a great gap divides the palaeolithic from the neolithic period will require modi- fication. Mr. Bruce Foote has recorded interesting brief descriptions of Implement factories. 1 Special references for 'pygmy flints' are :--Evans, Ancient Stone Inrlnements, 2nd ed., pp. 276, 325, fig. 232, D, E, F. Gatty, article in .Man, Feb. 1902; and MS. notes of the late Mr. Carlleyle. De Pierpoint, 'Observations sur de Tres Petits Instruments en Silex' (Bull. Soc. Anztlrop, de Bnxcellcs, tome xiii, 1894-5). V.A. Smith,' Pygmy Flints' (Ģid. ..nt. 90o6). The British Museum possesses an excellent set of inAlbvan speci- mens. The Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford and the National Museum at Dublin also have sets from Mr. Carlleyle's collection.