The picks made from the antlers of the red-deer were constructed simply by detaching the horn at a distance of about sixteen or seventeen inches from the brow end, and then breaking off all but the large brow-tine, with the help of fire and rude cutting implements of flint. They had been used both as picks and hammers, the point of the brow-tine serving for a pick, and the broad flat part opposite to it as a hammer for breaking off and detaching the flint from the chalk; while excavations through the solid chalk were effected by means of hatchets of basalt. The marks of both tools were abundant on the walls of the galleries; and many of the rude picks, including the two specially referred to, were coated with an incrustation of chalk, bearing the impress of the workmen’s fingers. Here, as in the Brixham cavern, an accident, which brought the ancient operations to an abrupt close, sealed up the evidence of them beyond reach of all obscuring interpolations, until their discovery in recent years. In clearing out one of the subterranean galleries excavated in the chalk, it was found that “the roof had given way about the middle of the gallery, and blocked up the whole width of it. On removing this, it was seen that the flint had been worked out in three places at the end, forming three hollows, extending beyond the chalk face of the end of the gallery.” In front of two of these hollows lay two picks, corresponding to others found in various parts of the shafts and galleries, made from the antler of the red-deer. But in this case the writer notes that the handle of each was laid towards the mouth of the gallery, the tines, which formed the blades of the tools, pointing towards each other, “showing, in all probability, that they had been used respectively by a right and a left-handed man. The day’s work over, the men had laid down each his tool, ready for the next day’s work; meanwhile the roof had fallen in, and the picks had never been recovered,” until their reproduction in evidence of the supposed habits of the right and left-handed workmen, by whom they were employed at the close of that last day’s labour, in the prehistoric dawn.[46] [Illustration: FIG. 39.—Scottish Stone Bracer.]