the shape of a spear-head.
Some flint-flakes are of the knifelike character; others resemble awls,
or borers, with sharp points evidently for making holes in skins for the
purpose of constructing a garment. Hammer-stones for crushing bones,
tools with well-wrought flat edges, scrapers, and other implements, were
the stock-in-trade of the earliest inhabitant of our country, and are
distinguishable from those used by Neolithic man by their larger and
rougher work. The maker of the old stone tools never polished his
implements; nor did he fashion any of those finely wrought arrowheads
and javelin points, upon which his successor prided himself. The latter
discovered that the flints which were dug up were more easily fashioned
into various shapes; whereas Palaeolithic man picked up the flints that
lay about on the surface of the ground, and chipped them into the form
of his rude tools. However, the elder man was acquainted with the use
of fire, which he probably obtained by striking flints on blocks of
iron pyrites. Wandering about the country in families and tribes, he
contrived to exist by hunting the numerous animals that inhabited the
primeval forests, and has left us his weapons and tools to tell us what
kind of man he was. His implements are found in the drift gravels by
the riversides; and from this cause his race are known as drift men,
in order to distinguish them from the _cave men_, who seem to have
belonged to a little later period.

The first dwellings of man were the caves on the hillsides, before he
found out the art of building pile huts. In Palaeolithic times these
caves were inhabited by a rude race of feral nomads who lived by the
chase, and fashioned the rude tools which we have already described.
They were, however, superior to the drift men, and had some notion of
art. The principal caves in the British islands containing the relics of
the cave folk are the following: Perthichoaren, Denbighshire, wherein
were found the remains of Platycnemic man--so named from his having
sharp shin-bones; Cefn, St. Asaph; Uphill, Somerset; King's Scar and the
Victoria Cave, Settle; Robin Hood's Cave and Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire;
Black Rock, Caldy Island, Coygan Caves, Pembrokeshire; King Arthur's
Cave, Monmouth; Durdham Downs, Bristol; and sundry others, near Oban, in
the valleys of the Trent, Dove, and Nore, and of the Irish Blackwater,
and in Caithness.

In these abodes the bones of both men and animals have been f