Blair Collection > Vestigia celtica

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an ancient Celt in the far prehistoric times.
He sits by a heap of rough nodular flint
stones, such as one sees to-day in the chalk
pits and railway-cuttings near Brighton.
To supply himself with some needful tool
or weapon, he splits the oblong nodular
flint-stones into flakes — splits them perhaps
with the same ease and skill, perhaps with
as light a tap of his rude hammer, though
it be not yet of metal, as does the patient
flint-dresser of to-day, when preparing
material for that outer encasement of shin-
ing flint, which gives to the old churches
of Sussex their peculiar charm of architec-
ture. Three flakes of shining flint stand
out conspicuous in the little heap, which
forms his open-air factory — to him all that
the ereat forces of Armstrono- and Whit-
worth are to us. Of the three flakes of
flint he chooses one, as best fitted for his
purpose. Taking it up, it becomes to him
the flint here ; the other flints, so far as for
the moment they concern him, being there,
yonder, or nowhere. His flint here we call
this one, his flint there we call that one, the