He can produce not only replicas of flint weapons and instruments, but makes them in crystal, obsidian or glass. Indeed, some of his arrow-heads cut from the thick brown glass of a Bovril bottle are exceedingly ornamental. Not content with imitating his own forebears, Snare has studied types of primitive weapons found in other countries, and can just as easily trim off a flint fisharrow such as was once used by the North American Indian for shooting salmon, the flatheaded bird-arrow of the neolithic period, or even the bone harpoons and barbed arrows of the South Sea Islands peoples.

With the advent of history and the keeping of records, Brandon is already famous for the skill of its flint workers. In the eleventh century knappers from Brandon were sent to shape the flints to build churches at Cromer, and even at far-away Hastings on the south coast. More remarkable still, Snare was then, as it is to-day, a well-known name among the flint working families. Here's a thought for the modern! The same name and the same trade have survived more than ten centuries of progress. The link is a double one.

Now it is less than one hundred years ago that the advent of the phosphorus match sounded the knell of the tinderbox. Before 1833 the striking of flint on steel to ignite a piece of charred cotton was the only known method of making fire, and it is therefore

easy to see the importance to England throughout the ages of Brandon's flint industry. The little band of workers grubbing for flints round the small town beside the Fens must have sent their products all over the country to bring light and warmth to the homes of Norman or Saxon, nobleman or serf.

The wise householder of Plantagenet, Tudor, or Stuart times was always careful to ask for the best Brandon flints! But the making of tinder-boxes was a steady uneventful industry involving a regular production year by year. It needed the evolution of the flint-lock musket to raise Brandon to a position of national importance, and to make it again what it must have been in prehistoric times, the arsenal of the kingdom.

The flint-lock was introduced into England from the Continent about the middle of the seventeenth century, and from that time till almost the middle of the nineteenth century Brandon formed the sole source of supply of flints for the Government. At no other time nor in any other country, perhaps, were the State's defences dependent upon the energies of one small body of men, without whose all-important products not a gun could be fired in Army or Navy! These two hundred years were the years of Brandon's greatness. Every week a sale of flints was held in the market-place, and was attended by the Government contractors, who bowled down the long straight roads from London in

their heavy coaches as the youth of to-day speeds down them in his high-powered car -with the difference that the latter dashes through Brandon without a thought of its former importance.

The "Brown Bess" musket of the Napoleonic Wars was fired with Brandon flints; the guns with which Nelson shattered the French at the Nile and Trafalgar were touched off with the same stone. It is a romantic thought, and yet even at the height of its importance this vital industry never boasted more than two hundred men. By the beginning of the nineteenth century Brandon held the contracts for the Navy, the Army, and for that great builder of Britain's Indian Empire, the East India Company. Some idea of the size of these contracts may be gained from the fact that one order given by the Company about one hundred years ago was so big as to give employment to the workers for twelve months, and to make possible a wage advance of 40 per cent. In 1848 production was put on a more regular basis by the formation of the Gun Flint Company with one hundred and thirty-eight shareholders. But it was almost the end. The introduction of new types of firearms into the English and Continental Armies cut down at one blow the demand for flints. The flint-lock was still to remain in use in Oriental countries for a little longer, but the last great order for VOL. CCXXI.-NO. MCCCXXXVIII.

gun-flints supplied by Brandon was one for eleven million carbine flints sent to the Turkish Government just before the outbreak of the Crimean War.

Slowly but surely the march of progress banished the musket from the ranks of the world's armies. But as it was superseded by the rifle, the older weapon was thrown upon the market, bought up by merchant firms, and traded to semicivilised or savage peoples in Africa, the East Indies, and elsewhere. Since the life of a gun-flint is a short one-the best flint will only serve for about one hundred shots-a fairly substantial demand was therefore still forthcoming, and for some time the flintknappers were kept in employment supplying the various export houses trading with the tribes of Central and Western Africa, the Congo, the natives of the Southern Mediterranean shore, and the islands of Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Archipelago. Flints for tinder-boxes were also required for export to China, the Straits Settlements, and even to the Dyaks of Borneo.

But a further blow was soon to be dealt at the ancient industry. The enormous numbers of flint-lock muskets which got into the hands of warlike tribes became a definite menace to peace and civilisation in many parts of the world, and measures were taken by Great Britain and other countries to limit the number of firearms in the possession of tribes under

U 2

their flags. In many areas only a stipulated number of men per village or tribe, the hunters for the community, were allowed to possess firearms. All guns except those in the possession of such authorised persons were collected and impounded. Simultaneously, definite steps were taken to put an end to the unscrupulous gun-running which was taking place in many less-civilised parts of the globe. Naturally these restrictive measures were at once reflected in the prosperity of Brandon's native industry.

Then came the Great War, one effect of which was to familiarise almost all and sundry with modern weapons. The Brandon flint-lock trade practically stopped, and has never really re-established itself since. Yet what was lost on the supply of gun-flints Brandon hoped to make up in flints for tinder-boxes. During the Boer War one small firm supplied 25,000 tinder-boxes for the use of British troops, yet the Great War was a sad disappointment, and only one order for 9000 tinder-boxes was completed.

At the present time there are still enough orders for gunflints for West Africa, and tinder-box flints for the Far East, just to keep the trade alive; but some idea of the way it has dwindled may be seen from the fact that whereas fifty years ago Brandon knappers turned out a steady 500,000 flints per week, it is now a rare thing for the total to be more than 40,000.

the smallest of Britain's export trades, and as such is sensitive to happenings in the most distant corners of the earth. A striking example of this has just occurred. A promising market for tinderbox flints was being opened up in China, but the increasing lawlessness in that country, together with the belief that many flints imported for use in tinder-boxes were actually doing service as gun - flints, caused restrictive measures to be taken against the importation of flints to the native Chinese. Thus the march of democracy in China has dealt a blow at conservatism in England.

is

The production of gun-flints quite standardised. The largest are known as common flints, for use in ancient fowlingpieces. Then comes "No. 6," which are large flints for use in Dane or Arab guns, and are also, like common flints, no longer required. "No. 5" is the flint for the Tower musket. "No. 4" are carbine flints. For some reason best known to the knappers themselves, there is no "No. 3" flint. "No. 2" is for use in horse pistols, and "No. 1," which are known as singles," are used for a somewhat more modern type of sporting gun. The two smallest kinds, which do not boast a number, are rifle-flints and flints for pocket-pistols.

Flints are always packed in regular quantities, and are counted in fives or casts." Thus, for example, a barrel of

The entire trade is now in the hands of two firms," if indeed the partnership of two or three men can thus be described, and gives employment to no more than six men. With the disappearance of this pitiful rearguard, will disappear not only the link with prehistoric ages, but also, unless active steps are taken to perpetuate them, the trade language and method of counting, which must be almost as old as the industry itself.

Throughout the ages the ages the knapper has apparently been quite illiterate. Even to-day, despite the institution of compulsory State education, many of the old workmen can neither read nor write, and their speech is not only in the broadest dialect, but is thickly interlarded with words whose origin is entirely lost. Thus, for example, a heap of flint blocks ready to go to the knapper is known as "jags"; a pillar of chalk left to uphold the roof in one of the workings is called a "jarm"; a layer or stratum is a "sase"; while the making of a slanting passage from one layer of flint to another rejoices in the curious phrase of "bubberhutching on the sosh"!

Still more remarkable is the knapper's method of rendering accounts. Being illiterate, he has yet evolved a most simple but ingenious method of count

ing his flints and submitting his bill in terms of money, yet the only conventional numeral he can make is a 7, for the sole reason that this is shaped like a pick!

= one

His other numerals are merely combinations of the three symbols X, I, Now X = 1000; I = one, if following the X sign, one hundred; half, whether of 1000 or 100 or any other number. If the flint-worker wishes to write that he has completed 1250 flints, he writes XII-; if the total is 2750, he writes XX7- ; if it is only 450, -. The numeral 5 is represented by four uprights and one diagonal thus MH. Consequently to represent a total of 1975 one would write X117. Here again the interest is in the antiquity of the method. It has been proved that the method of counting used by the diggers at Grimes Graves and elsewhere was the human hand, four fingers and a thumb, represented roughly as W. It is not a very long step from this to the method now in use, and the addition of the symbol X is the only witness to the influence of that civilisation which reached Great Britain from Rome.

When it comes to submitting a bill in terms of money, the same system is used, though the symbols are slightly different. The knapper uses the three headings of pounds, shillings, and pence. The sign for one pound sterling is a circle, thus O. Ten shillings, being half a pound, is . A penny

of

Already this method reckoning is obsolete in practice, and only survives in the memory of the older workers. The younger men, products of the national schools, know it not, but then it is unlikely that they will care to carry on in such a precarious trade when their seniors are laid to rest. Anachronism though it is, the ancient industry is dying hard. What demand still exists is at least a steady one, and while flint-lock muskets are used by the native hunters of West African villages or by the desert tribes of North Africa and Asia, while the Dyaks and Malays use tinder-boxes, so long will there be forthcoming orders for Brandon flints. For the fame of the town has reached wherever flint is used, and it is a fact that at the present day the "rough untutored savage of the Gold or Ivory Coasts will accept nothing but the blackest flints. This colour he associates with the highest quality of stones, which come only from Brandon. Consequently if the knappers ever use flints of a

lighter colour (incidentally colour makes little difference), they have to dye them before packing them for export.

But though the demand may continue for some years, there is no guarantee that in these days of high costs and standards of living, there will be found men willing to follow a calling at once so hard and so monotonous and yet so illrewarded. For though a steady income may have been possible in the days of Army and Navy contracts, the price paid for flints by the modern exporting house is no more generous than "strictly business "strictly business" considerations permit. There is no longer any money in flint-knapping. The present workmen, it must be admitted, remain at the trade more because it is in their blood, the occupation of their forebears to far-distant times; because it provides the only means of livelihood they know, and because, being largely of a passing generation, they are satisfied with less than their children of the present.

Flint-knapping may conceivably linger on five, ten, perhaps even twenty years, but it will exist rather in one or two men's knowledge of the art and craft of knapping than as a trade. The oldest industry in the world will soon be an industry no longer, but a curiosity fit to be ranked with the head-hunters and the dodo as a proper subject for historical research and veneration.