When we consider how well adapted for cutting purposes were |282| these simple flakes of flint, and how they constituted, as it were, the raw material for so many of the more finished forms, such as arrow-heads, of which the consumption in ancient times must have been enormous; and when, moreover, we take into account that in producing a well-formed flake many waste flakes and mere splinters must probably have been struck off, and that in forming the large implements of flint almost innumerable chips or spalls must have been made, their abundance on the sites of ancient dwelling-places is by no means surprising, especially as the material of which they are formed is almost indestructible. Such fragments of flint must have been among the daily necessities of ancient savage life, and we can well understand the feeling which led the survivors of the departed hunter to place in his grave not only the finished weapons of the chase, but the material from which to form them, as a provision for him in “the happy hunting grounds,” the only entrance to which was through the gate of Death. The occurrence of flint chips and potsherds in the soil of which barrows are composed, may in some cases be merely the result of their being made up of earth gathered from the surface of the ground, which from previous occupation by man was bestrewn with such remains. It is, however, often otherwise, especially when the flakes are in immediate association with the interment. The practice of throwing a stone on a cairn is no doubt a relic of an ancient custom.[1253] The “shards, flint, and pebbles” which Ophelia should have had thrown on her in her grave may, as has been suggested by Canon Greenwell,[1254] point to a sacred Pagan custom remembered in Christian times, but then deemed irreligious and unholy.