To complete the manufacture of gun-flints, each flake is taken in the left hand, and cut off into lengths of the width required, by means of the knapping hammer and the stake fixed in the bench. The flake is placed over the stake at the spot where it is to be cut, |21| and a skilful workman cuts the flake in two at a single stroke. The sections of flakes thus produced have a cutting edge at each end; but the finished gun-flint is formed by chipping off the edge at the butt-end and slightly rounding it by means of the fixed chisel and knapping hammer, the blows from which are made to fall just within the chisel, so that the two together cut much in the same manner as a pair of shears. Considerable skill is required in the manufacture, more especially in the production of the flakes; but Hacquet[80] says that a fortnight’s practice is sufficient to enable an ordinary workman to fashion from five hundred to eight hundred gun-flints in a day. According to him, an experienced workman will produce from a thousand to fifteen hundred per diem. Dolomieu estimates three days as the time required by a “_caillouteur_” to produce a thousand gun-flints; but as the highest price quoted for French gun-flints by Hacquet is only six francs the thousand, it seems probable that his calculation as to the time required for their manufacture is not far wrong. Some of the Brandon flint-knappers are, however, said to be capable of producing sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand gun-flints in a week. Taking the lowest estimate, it appears that a practised hand is capable of making at least three hundred flint implements of a given definite form, and of some degree of finish, in the course of a single day. If our primitive forefathers could produce their worked flints with equal ease, the wonder is, not that so many of them are found, but that they do not occur in far greater numbers. An elegant form of gun-flint, showing great skill in surface flaking, is still produced in Albania. A specimen, purchased at Avlona[81] by my son, is shown in Fig. 2A. Some gun-flints and strike-a-lights are formed of chalcedony or agate, and cut and polished. [Illustration: Fig. 2A.—Gun-flint, Avlona, Albania. 1∕1]