The ancient flint-workers had not, however, the advantages of steel and iron tools and other modern appliances at their command; and, at first sight, it would appear that the |22| production of flakes of flint, without having a pointed metallic hammer for the purpose, was a matter of great difficulty, I have, however, made some experiments upon the subject, and have also employed a Suffolk flint-knapper to do so, and I find that blows from a rounded pebble, judiciously administered, are capable of producing well-formed flakes, such as, in shape, cannot be distinguished from those made with a metallic hammer. The main difficulties consist—first, in making the blow fall exactly in the proper place; and, secondly, in so proportioning its intensity that it shall simply dislodge a flake, and not shatter it. The pebble employed as a hammer need not be attached to a shaft, but can be used, without any preparation, in the hand. Professor Nilsson tried the same method long ago, and has left on record an interesting account of his experience.[82] In the neighbourhood of the Pfahl-bauten of Moosseedorf, in Switzerland, have been found numerous spots where flint has been worked up into implements, and vast numbers of flakes and splinters left as refuse. Dr. Keller[83] says, that “the tools used for making these flint implements do not seem to have been of the same material, but of gabbro, a bluish-green and very hard and tough kind of stone. Several of these implements have been met with; their form is very simple, and varies between a cube and an oval. The oval specimens were ground down in one or two places, and the most pointed part was used for hammering.” There were nearly similar workshops at Wauwyl[84] and Bodmann, not to mention places where flint was dug for the purposes of manufacture. Closely analogous sites of ancient flint-workshops have been discovered both in France[85] and Germany[86] as well as in Great Britain; such, for instance, as that at the confluence[87] of the Leochel and the Don, in Aberdeenshire, where, moreover, flint is not native in the neighbourhood; but proper attention has not, in all cases, been paid to the hammer-stones, which, in all probability, occur with the chippings of flint. The blow from the hammer could not, of course, be always administered at the right spot; and I have noticed on some ancient flakes, a groove at the butt-end, the bottom of which is crushed, as if by blows from a round pebble, which, from having |23| fallen too near the edge of the block, had at first merely bruised the flint, instead of detaching the flake.