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centuries, would infallibly destroy a large number of them, and what were left would not be so instantly apparent to the eye as those in a peaty soil, and would consequently be found in fewer numbers. In districts where flint is scarce many ancient arrow-heads must have been used as strike-a-lights and gun-flints. In Ireland,^[1] as already stated, they were highly esteemed for the latter purpose. Even on land recently enclosed, and where arrow-heads and worked flints may exist in abundance, unless some unusual inducement is offered, they remain unnoticed by the farm-labourers; and it is only owing to the diligence of local collectors that such numbers have been found on the Yorkshire Wolds, the Derbyshire Moors, and in parts of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Suffolk. There seems, however, either from the character of the game pursued, or from some different customs of the early occupants of the country, to have been a far greater production of arrow-heads in these districts than in some other parts of Britain, such, for instance, as the Sussex Downs,^[2] where on land but recently enclosed, almost innumerable flakes, scrapers, and other instruments of flint may be found, but where I have hitherto never succeeded in finding a single arrow-point. It is possible that in some districts, bone may have been preferred to stone.

Apart from the greater general abundance in Ireland, there is a far greater relative abundance of some particular forms, especially of the barbed triangular arrow-heads without a central stem, and of the elongated form with the stem and barbs. Lozenge-shaped arrow-heads are also more frequent, and some of the varieties of this form do not appear to occur in Britain. As a rule, Irish arrow-heads are also of larger size than the British. Their forms have been described by Sir W. Wilde,^[3] Mr. Wakeman^[4] and others.

In France, flint arrow-heads are at least as rare as in England, if not indeed rarer. In some of the dolmens of Brittany explored by the Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A.,^[5] he has found them both leaf-shaped and stemmed and barbed. Among the latter there are some of extremely neat workmanship, and closely resembling in form Fig. 312. I have seen the same form from the Côtes du Nord. Some beautiful examples, more elongated than Fig. 319 and with very small tangs, were found in a tumulus at Cruguel,^[6] Morbihan. The more common

1. Nature, vol. xxiii. p. 218.
2. Dr. Mantell, however, found a flint arrow-head in a barrow near Lewes.—"York Vol. of Arch. Inst.," p. 1.
3. "Cat. Mus. R. I. A.," p. 19 seqq.
4. "Archæol. Hibern." (1891), p. 269 seqg.
5. Arch. Assoc. Journ., vol. xxiv. p. 40.
6. Rev. Arch., 3rd S., vol. xvi. pl. xvii. p. 304.