been closed. They were also formerly manufactured in small numbers at Catton, near Norwich. At Brandon, in 1868, I was informed that upwards of twenty workmen were employed, who were capable of producing among them from 200,000 to 250,000 gun-flints per week. These were destined almost entirely for exportation, principally to Africa. On July 18th, 1890, the Daily News[1] gave the number of workmen at Brandon as thirty-five.
Some other sites of the gun-flint manufacture in former times are mentioned by Mr. Skertchly, as for instance. Clarendon near Salisbury; Gray's Thurrock, Essex; Beer Head, Devon; and Glasgow; besides several places in Norfolk and Suffolk.
In France the manufacture of gun-flints is still carried on in the Department of Loir et Cher,[2] and various other localities are recorded by Mr. Skertchly.[3]
In proof of the antiquity of the use of flint as a means of producing fire, I need hardly quote the ingenious derivation of the word Silex as given by Vincent of Beauvais:—"Silex est lapis durus, sic dictus eò quod ex eo ignis exiliat."[4] But before iron was known as a metal, it would appear that flint was in use as a fire-producing agent in combination with blocks of iron pyrites (sulphide of iron) instead of steel. Nodules of this substance have been found in both French and Belgian bone-caves belonging to an extremely remote period; while, as belonging to Neolithic times, to say nothing of discoveries in this country, which will subsequently be mentioned, part of a nodule of pyrites may be cited which was found in the Lake settlement of Robenhausen, and had apparently been thus used.[5] In our own days, this method of obtaining fire has been observed among savages in Tierra del Fuego, and among the Eskimos of Smith's Sound.[6] The
- ↑ N. and Q. 7th S., vol. x. p. 172.
- ↑ Mat. 3me S., vol. ii. (1885) p. 61.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 38.
- ↑ Spec. Naturæ, lib. ix. sect. 13.
- ↑ Morlot in Rev. Arch., vol, v. (1862), p. 216. Geologist, vol. v. p. 192. Engelhardt found several similar pieces of pyrites at Thorsbjerg, with iron and other antiquities of about the fourth century of our era. He says that steels for striking fire are not at present known as belonging to the Early Iron Age of Denmark. This late use of pyrites affords strong evidence of iron and steel having been unknown to the makers of flint implements, for had they made use of iron hammers, the superior fire-giving properties of flint and iron would at once have been evident, and pyrites would probably soon have been superseded, at all events in countries where flint abounded—Engelhardt, "Thorsbjerg Mosefund," p. 60; p. 65 in the English edit. The quartz pebbles with grooves in them which belong to the Iron Age seem, however, to have been used for producing fire by means of a pointed steel.
- ↑ Weddell, "Voyage towards the South Pole," p. 167; Tylor, "Early History of Mankind," 2nd edit., p. 249. Wood's "Nat. Hist. of Man," vol. ii. p. 522.
